he found himself surrounded by five huge wolves that sat on their tails watching him curiously.  Gripping his ax he would hurry back to call his companions and harness the dogs and hurry back to the village before the early darkness should fall upon them.  As the komatik went careering over the snow, the dogs yelping and straining at the harness, the men running alongside shouting Hi-hi and cracking their whips, they could still see, over their shoulders, the wolves following lightly close behind; but when they rushed breathless into their houses, and grabbed their guns, and ran back on the trail, there was nothing to be seen.  For the wolves, quick as light to feel the presence of danger, were already far away, trotting swiftly up the frozen arm of the harbor, following another sledge trail which came down that morning from the wilderness.

That same night the wolves appeared silently in the little lodge, far up the Southeast Brook, where in a sheltered hollow of the hills the fishermen’s families were sleeping away the bitter winter.  Here for one long night they watched and waited in vain; for every living thing was safe in the tilts behind barred doors.  In the morning little Noel’s eyes kindled as he saw the wolves’ tracks; and when they came back again the tilts were watching.  As the lop-eared cub darted after a cat that shot like a ray of moonlight under a cabin, a window opened noiselessly, and zing! a bowstring twanged its sharp warning in the tense silence.  With a yelp the wolf tore the arrow from his shoulder.  The warm blood followed the barb, and he lapped it eagerly in his hunger.  Then, as the danger swept over him, he gave the trail cry and darted away.  Doors banged open here and there; dogs barked to crack their throats; seal guns roared out and sent their heavy echoes crashing like thunder among the hills.  Silence fell again over the lodge; and there were left only a few frightened dogs whose noses had already told them everything, a few fishermen who watched and listened, and one Indian boy with a long bow in his hand and an arrow ready on the string, who trailed away with a little girl at his side trying to puzzle out the track of one wolf that left a drop of blood here and there on the snow in the scant moonlight.

Far up on the hillside in a little opening of the woods the scattered pack came together again.  At the first uproar, so unbearable to a silence-loving animal, they had vanished in five different directions; yet so subtle, so perfect is the instinct which holds a wolf family together that the old mother had scarcely entered the glade alone and sat down to wait and listen when the other wolves joined her silently.  Malsunsis, the big cub, scarcely felt his wound at first, for the arrow had but glanced through the thick skin and flesh, and he had torn it out without difficulty; but the old he-wolf limped painfully and held up one fore leg, pierced by a seal shot, as he loped away over the snow.