y wolves,
sat down and wrote a letter to her husband, telling him she had met with
an accident, and desiring him to come to her at once. She dared not give
him the slightest hint as to what had actually befallen her, as she knew
the old woman would read the letter.

When she had finished her note, the Vargamor took it, and for the next
twelve hours Liso had a very anxious time.

"If he doesn't come soon," the old woman at length said to her, with an
evil chuckle, "I shall have to let the wolves in. They are famishing;
and I, too, want something tastier than rabbits and squirrels."

The minutes passed, and Liso was nearly fainting with suspense, when
there suddenly broke on her ears the distant tramp of horses' feet; and
in a very few moments a droshky dashed up to the door.

"Call him in here," the Vargamor said, "and run up and hide in your
bedroom. My pets and I will enjoy him all the better by the fire, and
there won't be so much risk of them being hurt."

Liso, afraid to do otherwise, ran up the rickety ladder leading to her
room, shouting as she did so, "Oscar! Oscar! come in, come in."

The joyful note in her husband's voice as he replied to her invitation
struck a new chord in Liso's nature--a chord which had been there all
the time, but had got choked and clogged through over-indulgence. Full
of a courage that dared anything in its determination to save him, she
crept cautiously down the stairs, and just as he crossed the threshold,
and the Vargamor was about to summon the wolves, she dashed up to the
old woman and struck her with all her might. Then, seizing her husband,
she dragged him out of the house, and, hustling him into the carriage,
jumped in by his side and told the coachman to drive home with the
utmost speed.

All this was done in less time than it takes to tell, and once again the
familiar sounds of pattering--patterings on the snow in the wake of the
carriage--fell on Liso's ears, and all the old horrors of the preceding
journey came back to her with full force.

Slowly, despite the fact that there were two horses now, the wolves
gained on them, and once again the same harrowing question arose in
Liso's mind. Some one must be sacrificed. Which should it be? The
coachman! without doubt the coachman. He was only a poor, uneducated
man, a hireling, and his life was as nothing compared either with that
of her husband or her own.

But she now remembered that Oscar, though usually a mere straw