In January a wind blew steadily from the east and snow came as if to bury them alive.  The cabin turned to a cave, a small square of warmth under a mountain of impenetrable white; one door and one window only, opening to a space of sun.  Against the others the blank white lids of winter pressed.  Sheila shoveled this space out sometimes twice a day.  The dog kennels were moved into it, and stood against the side of a snow-bank eight feet high, up which, when they were unchained, the gaunt, wolfish animals leapt in a loosely formed pack, the great mother, Brenda, at their head, and padded off into the silent woods in their hungry search for food.

But, one day, they refused to go.  Miss Blake, her whip in her hand, limped out.  The snow had stopped.  The day was still and bright again above the snowy firs, the mountain scraped against the blue sky like a cliff of broken ice.  The dogs had crept out of their houses and were squatted or huddled in the sun.  As she came out they rose and strained at their tethers.  One of them whined.  Brenda, the mother, bared her teeth.  One by one, as they were freed, they slunk close to Miss Blake, looking up into her face.  They crowded close at her heels as she went back to the house.  She had to push the door to in their very jaws and they pressed against it, their heads hung low, sniffing the odor of food.  Presently a long-drawn, hideous howling rose from them.  Time and again Miss Blake drove them away with lash and voice.  Time and again they came back.  They scratched at the threshold, whimpered, and whined.

Sheila and Miss Blake gave them what food they would have eaten themselves that day.  It served only to excite their restlessness, to hold them there at the crack of the door, snuffling and slobbering.  The outer circle slept, the inner watched.  Then they would shift, like sentries.  They had a horrible sort of system.  Most of that dreadful afternoon Miss Blake paced the floor, trying to strengthen her ankle for the trip to the post-office.  At sunset, when the small snow-banked room was nearly dark, she stopped, threw up her head, and looked at Sheila.  The girl was sitting on the lowest step of the ladder washing some dried apples.  Her face had thinned to a silvery wedge between the thick square masses of her hair.  There was a haunted look in her clear eyes.  The soft mouth had tightened.

“How in God’s name,” said Miss Blake, “shall I get ’em on their chains again?”

Sheila stopped her work, and her lips fell helplessly apart.  She looked up at the older woman and shook her head.

Miss Blake’s fear snapped into a sort of frenzy.  She gritted her teeth and stamped.  “You simpleton!” she said.  “You never have a notion in your head.”

Sheila stood up quickly.  Something told her that she had better be on her feet.  She kept very still.  “You will know better than I could what to do about the dogs,” she said quietly.  “They’ll go back on their chains for you, I should think.  They’re afraid of you.”