There was no trap-door to the little loft, but Agnes laid the ladder across it, hoping that, though the rungs would give the creature something to clutch, it would perhaps prevent him from doing more. After a while the leaping ceased, and the wolf, sitting on his haunches below there, snarled and showed his teeth; but now Agnes, being satisfied that he could not reach her, felt her fear subsiding, and the situation, instead of being exciting, became rather tiresome. She was missing the fun at the M’Cleans’. She wondered how much longer she was to be kept prisoner by this ugly creature. He did not seem disposed to go away. Perhaps he would keep her there all day. Wolves were not apt to come around in the daytime, especially at this season, though at night it was safer to shut windows and doors against them. This one must have been pursued by some hunter, and had come suddenly upon the cabin. Agnes peered down at him from between the rungs of the ladder, and thought he was a very unattractive brute as he sat there with his red tongue lolling out. “I’d like your hide, you ugly beast,” she said, “but I don’t want you to get mine. I think I’ll drag my bed across the ladder, and then if he can’t see me, perhaps he will go away.”
This proceeding, however, seemed only to increase the wolf’s ambition to get upstairs, for he flung himself madly into the air and once came so near that Agnes’s heart stood still. Yet he came no nearer, and the long day wore on—a doleful day indeed. Agnes could not expect any one to come to her assistance, for her father, knowing her intention of going to the M’Cleans’, had taken his lunch with him and had gone to the aid of Johnny McCormick, like the rest of the men in the settlement.
It was late in the afternoon that Agnes at last heard some one call “Agnes! Agnes! Nancy Kennedy, where are you?” Then there was the sudden crack of a rifle. The girl pulled aside the bearskin which made her bed and peeped below. On the floor lay the gray form of the wolf, and over it stood Archie M’Clean. “Agnes, oh, Agnes,” he cried, “are you hurt?”
From above came the answer: “No, I am quite safe. I’ll put the ladder back and come down. I am so glad you have killed that horrible wolf. He has kept me up here all day. How did you happen to come?” she asked, when she was safe by Archie’s side.
“We wondered why you didn’t come as you promised, and Jeanie said she was afraid something had happened, so when I came out for the cows, I stopped to see.”
“And found the wolf. Well, he has kept me a prisoner all day besides eating up my father’s supper.”
“Never mind, his skin will be very comfortable for you on the floor.”
“Oh, but it’s yours; you killed him.”
“I think you deserve it, for you kept him there all day so I could kill him when I came along.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Agnes, laughing.