in the darkness, her fair pale face bowed on her hand, and her beautiful light hair damp with dew—a shudder thrilled her frame. She arose, and, shivering with a damp chillness, retired into the house; but before she shut the door, she turned her eyes once more from earth to sky, and— “It is a most beautiful night,” she said; “a lovely night, ‘not made for sleep.’” A singular low noise caught her ear, and ceased. “That sounds like a sudden fall of rain stopped,” she said, and paused to listen. Not hearing the noise again, she closed the door; and without in the least degree intending to do it, quite mechanically she did the wisest thing that could have been done. She _barred_ the door, and then she seated herself once more in the rocking-chair. The room was intensely dark. The faint light that stole in at the sheeted window only seemed a thinner blackness. She sat gently rocking to and fro, and gradually relapsing into reverie. It was soon rudely broken through. Still like the sudden heavy fall of rain-drops on forest leaves, multitudinous footsteps thronged pattering around the cabin—pawing at its walls! Startled, astonished, yet not alarmed, Rosalie listened. Then a low ground swell of a growl arose, murmuring on the air, and thrilling every nerve with awe. It was low, deep, and threatening, as the thrilling bass string of the harpsichord when rudely swept by some idler’s hand. Rosalie stood up; and, resting her hand upon the rocking-chair, listened more intently. The sound ceased—all was still as death. She crept cautiously to the window, and, pulling aside slightly the edge of the sheet-blind, where it was tacked to the side of the frame, she looked out. The night was deeply dark, though the sky was still studded with stars—_the ground was also lighted with stars_—twin stars, scattered all about. At first sight she took these for lightning-bugs; but, as she gazed, she knew them to be the phosphoric, excited eyes of couchant wild beasts. And, at the same instant that she made this appalling discovery, the whole pack burst, in full cry, upon the cabin, tearing at the walls, and howling furiously with hunger, rage, and frantic desire. Rosalie tottered back to her chair, and sank into it. The whole horrible truth, in all its detail of cause, effect, and consequence, burst with overwhelming force upon her senses. It was a pack of hungry wolves!—the same pack that the Indian hunters had pursued into the neighbourhood of Shelton—the same pack that had been the terror of the settlement since their discovery near it. They had been drawn to the cabin by the scent of blood from the newly-killed beef, and there was no light in the house to fright them off. Sick—oh, sick, and nearly swooning with deadly terror—Rosalie still charged her soul “to hold her body strengthened” for the crisis.