“Dear Rose, we had better not revert to the subject again to-night. Try to compose yourself.”
“I cannot! If I close my eyes and lie still, I hear again those dreadful howls—I see again those glaring eyes and ghastly fangs—I live over again the terrible danger.”
“My dear Rosalie, there was really no very great danger, and it was all over as soon as I reached the spot with fire-arms,” said Mark, calmly, and wishing to depreciate the peril she had passed, and restore her to quietness.
“Yet tell me about it—if you will talk to me about the escape I shall not brood over the appalling”——
She shuddered, and was silent.
“There is really very little to tell, Rosalie. As I approached the house on my return home I heard the howling of the wolves. I surmised the truth instantly—that they were the same pack the neighbours had been after for the last few days—that the smell of the fresh meat we had brought over the prairie and into the forest had decoyed them to the cabin, from whence there was no light to scare them. I hurried on as fast as possible, and soon came upon the cabin, and found a pack of perhaps a dozen wolves baying around the house, and leaping and scratching at the walls. They were prairie wolves—a small, cowardly race—who go in packs, and who are generally very easily driven off. I first of all picked up and threw a billet of wood at them. I forgot, dear Rose, that our window had no better defence than a sheet, or else I never thought of it at all, for when I threw the piece of wood, it not only passed through the pack of wolves, but on through the window-place, too—scattering the animals, but also making an opening, through which several of them, in their efforts to escape, leaped into the house”——
“It was then I fainted,” said Rosalie.
“I found you lying on the floor, insensible.”
“But you and the wolves?”
“A very short skirmish served to put the enemy to flight. I succeeded in killing only two of them—two that had leaped before me in at the window—the others escaped.”