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 in her hands, and ready to do anything she asked him, had one or two peculiarities—fondness for children and animals, and a great respect for life—life in every grade. Would he consent to sacrifice the coachman? And as she glanced at him, a feeling of awe came over her. What a big, strong man this husband of hers was, and what strength he had—strength of all kinds, physical as well as mental—if he cared to exert it. But then he loved, worshipped, and adored her; he would never treat her with anything but the utmost deference and kindness, no matter what she said or did. Still, when she got ready to whisper the fatal suggestion in his ear, her heart failed her. And then the new something within her—that something that had already spoken and seemed inclined to be painfully officious—once more asserted itself. The coachman was married, he had children—four people dependent on him, four hearts that loved him! With her it was different: no one was actually dependent on her—there were no children now! Nothing but the memory of them! Memory—what a hateful thing it was! She had forced them to give her their lives; would it not be some atonement for her act if she were now to offer hers? She made the offer—breathed it with a shuddering soul into her husband's ears—and with a great round oath he rejected it.
"What! You! Let you be thrown to the wolves?" he roared. "No—sooner than that, ten thousand times sooner, I will jump out! But I don't think there is any need. Knowing there were wolves about, I brought arms. If occasion arises we can easily account for half of them. But we shall outdistance them yet."
He spoke the truth. Bit by bit the powerful horses drew away from the pack, and ere the last trees of the forest were passed, the howlings were no longer heard and all danger was at an end.
Then, and not till then, did Oscar learn what had become of the children.