quickly for two men? They have been having a rather terrible time
of it, and are a good bit shaken."

"Bring them into the kitchen and I will have the coffee ready
directly," Mrs. Burton said promptly. But first of all she just
looked into her father's room to tell him there was nothing to
worry about. Then she hurried into the kitchen to rouse up the fire
and put the coffee pot on to boil.

Oily Dave and Stee Jenkin accepted Katherine's invitation to walk
in, following her through the dark store and into the lighted room
beyond with a sheepish expression on their faces, which certainly
no one had ever seen there before. Stee Jenkin had his outer
garments nearly torn off him, there was blood on his face, and he
sank on to the nearest bench as if his trembling limbs refused to
support him any longer.

"Why, your face is bleeding! What have you been doing--not
fighting, I hope?" T here was a touch of severity in Mrs. Burton's
tone; for she knew the man did not bear a very good character, and
she was not disposed to give herself much trouble on account of
anyone who had brought his misfortunes upon his own head.

"Yes, ma'am, I have been fighting, and for my life too, which is a
very different thing from a round of fisticuffs with your
neighbour," growled Stee Jenkin in a shaken tone, and the hand with
which he tried to lift the steaming coffee to his lips shook so
violently that he spilled the hot liquid on his clothes.

Katherine and Miles had gone back to the store again, so it was
Oily Dave who explained the nature of the fight in which both men
had been involved.

"We'd a perticular bit of business on hand to-night," he said, in
response to the enquiring look which Mrs. Burton turned upon him,
for Stee was plainly too much upset to be coherent. "I'd got a
revolver certainly, but Stee had nothing but a knife, for we didn't
expect any trouble with wolves so early in the season, though it is
a fact we might have done, for everyone knows the place is just
about swarming with them this winter."

"Did the wolves attack you? Oh, how truly horrible!" exclaimed
Mrs. Burton, with so much genuine sympathy that both men winced
under it, hardened offenders though they were; for they knew very
well that they deserved the fate which had so nearly fallen upon
them.

"About ten of the cowards closed in on us as we were going through
a patch of cotton woods, where we couldn't move fast because of
catching our snow-sh