All the while the men were at work, Carl and the wolfling were crying to each other.
The wolfling was not yet six months old, and had not learned to be so wary as its mother. Yet it was strangely quieted when it found itself a prisoner. Not so Carl: he stamped, and sobbed, and kicked in an agony of distress, because he was shut out.
"Give him his liberty," said Mr. Desborough. "Let him run up to it if he likes."
Carl flew to the hurdles and tried to push between their rails, whilst Fawnie, as Oliver called the wolfling, worked at them from the inside. But the iron walls of his prison were too firmly built to be shaken. A frog leaped out of the grass. Fawnie snapped it up, and brought it to give to Carl through his prison bars.
Then Mrs. Desborough realized how her darling had been fed and kept alive in the trackless jungle.
Oliver was telling her of the old gray wolf now in Rattam's cage, and the Thibetan repeated her story.
The mother's feelings can be better imagined than described when she saw thus clearly that the love of the wild wolves had saved her child. Could she doubt it?
"Ought we to think it impossible?" urged Oliver. "In spite of all its savagery, the dog's nature is in the wolf. It is the strong family feeling amongst them which makes the pack. You see, I have heard a great deal about them from Tara Ghur; and I shall never forget that old wolf's face as she turned to Carl in the pit."
Gobur and the gardener were cutting off some long branches from the nearest trees, to thatch poor Fawnie's pyramid and shelter him from the sun.
Oliver ran to help them, until Fawnie's den looked like a gigantic heap of boughs. Then Oliver fetched the gardener's syringe and drenched it.