CHAPTER THREE.

WHERE THE WOLVES HOWL.

"Ugh!" A long, shivering shudder following upon the low, dismal howl of
a wolf.

"Bah! How cold it is lying out here in this chilly wind which comes
down from the mountain tops! I say, what an idiot I was to strip myself
and turn my greatcoat into a counterpane! No, I won't be a humbug; that
wasn't the cold. It was sheer fright--cowardice--and I should have felt
just the same if I had had a blanket over me. The brutes! There is
something so horrible about it. The very idea of their coming down from
the mountains to follow the trail of the fighting, and hunt out the dead
or the wounded who have been forgotten or have crawled somewhere for
shelter."

Pen Gray lay thinking in the darkness, straining his ears the while to
try and convince himself that the faint sound he heard was not a
movement made by a prowling wolf scenting them out; and as he lay
listening, he pictured to himself the gaunt, grisly beast creeping up to
spring upon him.

"Only fancy!" he said sadly. "That wasn't the breathing of one of the
beasts, only the wind again that comes sighing down from the
mountains.--I wish I was more plucky."

He stretched out his hand and laid his rifle amongst the shrubs with its
muzzle pointed in the direction from whence the sighing sound had come.

"I'll put an end to one of them," he muttered bitterly, "if I don't miss
him in the dark. Pooh! They won't come here, or if they do I have only
to jump up and the cowardly beasts will dash off at once; but it is
horrid lying here in the darkness, so solitary and so strange. I
wouldn't care so much if the stars would come out, but they won't
to-night. To-night? Why, it must be nearly morning, for I have been
lying here hours and hours. And how dark it is in this valley, with the
mountains towering up on each side. I wish the day would come, but it
always does seem ten times as long when you are waiting and expecting
it. It is getting cold though. Seems to go right through to one's
bones.--Poor boy," he continued, as he stretched out one hand and gently
passed it beneath his companion's covering. "He's warm enough. No--too
hot; and I suppose that's fever from his wound. Poor chap! Such a boy
too! But as brave as brave. He must be a couple of years younger than
I am; but he's more of a man. Oh, I do wish it was morning, so that I
could try and do something. There must be cottages somewhere--
shepherd