rds of a score of
caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren,
stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou
moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two
Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps,
scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that
hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the
woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So
they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled
exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and
laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail,
the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and
swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.

Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white
surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion
so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the
edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had
been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the
snow and settle to rest again. But now, where the plain seemed most
empty and lifeless, seven great white wolves crouched down in the snow
in a little hollow, their paws extended, their hind legs bent like
powerful springs beneath them, their heads raised cautiously so that
only their ears and eyes showed above the rim of the little hollow where
they hid. So they lay, tense, alert, ready, watching with eager,
inquisitive eyes the two children drawing steadily nearer, the only sign
of life in the whole wide, desolate landscape.

* * * * *

Follow the back trail of the snow-shoes now, while the wolves are
waiting, and it leads you over the great barren into the gloomy spruce
woods; beyond that it crosses two more barrens and stretches of
intervening forest; then up a great hill and down into a valley, where
the lodge lay hidden, buried deep under Newfoundland snows.

Here the fishermen lived, sleeping away the bitter winter. In the late
autumn they had left the fishing village at Harbor Weal, driven out like
the wild ducks by the fierce gales that raged over the whole coast. With
their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail
up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and le