ring again through the trees, much louder
now and nearer. It lent new strength to her tired little feet, and she
fled on faster than ever, her red lips open and her eyes wide. Another
slight turn of the trail, and it ran once more directly towards the
moon, stretching on and on till it narrowed from sight. And nowhere in
the shining track was Dave to be seen. Lidey had now, however, but one
thought in her quivering brain, and that was to keep running and get
to her father before those dreadful voices could overtake her. She
knew they were coming up swiftly. They sounded terribly near. When she
had gone about two hundred yards beyond the last bend of the trail,
she noticed, a few steps ahead of her, a tiny clearing, and at its
farther edge the gable of a little hut rising a couple of feet above
the snow. She knew the place. She had played in it that summer, while
Dave was cutting the coarse hay on the clearing. It was a place that
had been occupied by lonely trappers and lumber prospectors. Being a
work of men's hands, it gave the child a momentary sense of comfort,
of companionship in the dreadful wild. She paused, uncertain whether
to continue along the trail or to seek the shelter of the empty hut.

When the crunching of her own little footsteps stopped, however, she
was instantly aware of the padding of other feet behind her. Looking
back, she saw a pack of grey beasts just coming around the turn. They
were something like dogs. But Lidey knew they were not dogs. She had
seen pictures of them--awful pictures. She had read stories of them
which had frozen her blood as she read. Now, her very bones seemed to
melt within her. They were wolves! For a moment her throat could form
no sound. Then--"Father!" she screamed despairingly, and rushed for
the hut.

As she reached it, the wolves were hardly a dozen paces behind. The
door stood half open, but drifted full of snow to within little more
than a foot of the top. Into the low opening the child dived head
first, like a rabbit, crept behind the door, and fell upon the snow,
gasping, too horror-stricken to make any outcry.

A step from the hut door the wolves halted abruptly. The half-buried
hut, and the dark hole leading into it--these were things they did not
understand, except that they recognized them as belonging to man.
Anything belonging to man was dangerous. In that dark hole they
suspected a trap. The leader went up to it, and almost poked his nose
into it, sniff