"That would hardly be surprising," was Bob's reply as he shouldered the meat wrapped up in the deerskin, leaving to his brother the two muskets and the small game. "It was only a few days ago that Amiel Teene had an adventure with the pests not ten miles away from his cabin." "Yes, and he said he had never seen them so savage," declared Sandy, glancing around at the snowy forest, as if in imagination he could already see a host of gaunt gray forms leaping toward them. "The winter has been unusually long and hard, and, as we happen to know, Sandy, game has been scarce. Perhaps it was so up in the mountains, and the animals have been pushed to venture nearer the settlements than at most times. This storm will make them even worse." "Then, if we should meet a pack to-night, the scent of this fresh meat would make them crazy to get at us," said Sandy, reflectively, as he fell in alongside his brother. "Yes, I can easily believe it," grunted the larger youth, who had quite a load on his back, and could afford just then to expend little of his wind in conversation. "And perhaps we might have to take to a tree, just as I did two years ago, waiting for dawn to drive the critters away; eh, Bob?" "Not on such a night as this, brother," remarked the one addressed. "You forget that it was not bitter cold weather when you met with your little experience. To-night, if we climbed into a tree, we might freeze to death before morning." "Then what can we do? I am sure I heard a far-off howl again just then; and perhaps those sharp-nosed rascals have already scented a dinner," and Sandy pushed a little closer to his companion, deeply stirred. It was no imaginary peril that hung over their heads. A single wolf might play the part of a coward, and shrink from mankind; but when gathered in a pack the beasts became an object of dread to every settler on the border. More than one man, in the history of Virginia, had been dragged down by starving wolves; and of all times of the year the end of a hard winter was the worst. "I had thought of that, Sandy," the elder brother went on; "and remembered that, just before we sighted the deer, I had seen a place that offered us a refuge. It is toward that point I am now trying to lead the way. Keep your eyes open for a fallen tree. I think we must be near the spot right now." "And there it is," announced Sandy, joyfully, as he pointed ahead. They were in fact right upon it, though the sifting, driving snow had, up to that moment, hidden from their eager eyes all signs of the wished-for goal. And when Sandy saw what a fortress was afforded them by the hole in the ground, where the roots of the tree had once grown, he was ready to throw up his cap and shout with satisfaction. At some time in the remote past a great wind storm had evidently uprooted this forest monarch; but, in falling, it had not quite lain flat, so that, twenty feet from the roots, one might even walk underneath the trunk.