ing. But he backed away sharply as if he had met with a
blow on the snout, and his nostrils wrinkled in savage enmity. The man
smell was strong in the hut. It seemed very like a trap.

Lying flat on her stomach behind the door, Lidey stared out through
the narrow crack with eyes that seemed starting from her head. Out
there in the clear glitter of the moonlight she saw the wolves go
prowling savagely to and fro, and heard their steps as they cautiously
circled the hut, seeking another entrance. They kept about five or six
feet distant from it at first, so suspicious were they of that man
smell that had greeted the leader's first attempt at investigation.
When they had prowled about the hut for several minutes, they all sat
down on their haunches before the door and seemed to deliberate. The
child felt their dreadful eyes piercing her through and through, as
they searched her out through the crack and penetrated her vain
hiding.

Suddenly, while the eyes of all the pack were flaming upon her, she
saw the leader come swiftly forward and thrust his fierce snout
right against the crack of the door. In a sort of madness she
struck at it with her little, mittened hand. The wolf, apparently
still disconcerted by the man smell that greeted his nostrils, sprang
back warily. Then the whole pack drew a foot or two closer to the
open doorway. Ravenous though they were, they were not yet assured
that the hut was not a trap. They were not yet quite ready to
crawl in and secure their prey. But gradually they were edging
nearer. A few moments more and the leader, no less crafty than savage,
would creep in. Already he had accustomed himself to the menace of
that scent. Now, he did creep in, as far as the middle of his body,
investigating. His red jaws and long, white teeth appeared around the
edge of the door. At the sight Lidey's voice returned to her.
Shrinking back against the farthest wall, she gave shriek after
shriek that seemed to tear the dreadful stillness. In the madness of
her terror she hardly noticed that the wolf's head was suddenly
withdrawn.

III

When Dave Patton set out for the Settlement, he found the snow-shoeing
so good, the biting air so bracing, and his own heart so light with
hope and health, that he was able to make the journey in something
less than a day and a half. Out of this time he had allowed himself
four hours for sleep, in an old lumber camp beside the trail. At the
Settlement, which boasted s