that the brutes had not yet seen her. They were nose down at the scent. One by one they vanished in a little dip of ground, one by one they reappeared, two yards away. Sheila pulled out her gun, deliberately aimed and fired. A spurt of snow showed that she had aimed short. But the loud, sudden report made Brenda swerve. All the dogs stopped and slunk together circling, their haunches lowered. Wreck squatted, threw up his head, and howled. Sheila spoke to them, clear and loud, her young voice ringing out into that loneliness. "You Berg! Good dog! Come here." One of the shaggy animals moved toward her timidly, looking back, pausing. Brenda snarled. "Berg, come here, boy!" Sheila patted her knee. At this the big dog whined, cringed, and began to swarm up the slope toward her on his belly. His eyes shifted, the struggle of his mind was pitifully visible--pack-law, pack-power, the wolf-heart and the wolf-belly, and against them that queer hunger for the love and the touch of man. Sheila could not tell if it were hunger or loyalty that was creeping up to her in the body of the beast. She kept her gun leveled on him. When he had come to within two feet of her, he paused. Then, from behind him rose the starved baying of his brothers. Sheila looked up. They were bounding toward her, all wolf these--but more dangerous after their taste of human blood than wolves--to the bristling hair along their backs and the bared fangs. Again she fired. This time she struck Wreck's paw. He lifted it and howled. She fired again. Brenda snapped sideways at her shoulder, but was not checked. There was one shot left. Sheila knew how it must be used. Quickly she turned the muzzle up toward her own head. Then behind her came a sharp, loud explosion. Brenda leapt high into the air and fell at Sheila's feet. At that first rifle-shot, Berg fled with shadow swiftness through the trees. For the rest, it was as though a magic wall had stopped them, as though, at a certain point, they fell upon death. Crack, crack, crack--one after another, they came up, leapt, and dropped, choking and bleeding on the snow. At the end Sheila turned blindly. A yard behind her and slightly above her there under the pines stood Hilliard, very pale, his gun tucked under his arm, the smoking muzzle lowered. Weakly she felt her way up toward him, groping with her hands. He slid down noiselessly on his long skis and she stood clinging to his arm, looking up dumbly into his strained face. "I heard your shots," he said breathlessly. "You're within a hundred yards of my house.... For months I've been trying to make up my mind to come to you. God forgive me, Sheila, for not coming before!" Swinging his gun on its strap across his shoulder, he lifted her in his arms, and, like a child, she was carried through the silence of the woods, all barred with blood-red glimmers from a setting sun. CHAPTER XII THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN