I thought I had never seen a place quite so cold before; but I carried over the mattress from my bed, together with several blankets, and placed them in a small back room in the second story. The doors and windows of the first story were all nailed and boarded up, and it seemed about the last place that you would expect to find any one sleeping. I left the dog and cat in the hotel, took one of the rifles with me, and pulled in my drawbridge. I almost dropped it as I did so, for at that instant the wolves set up another unearthly howling. I got into bed as quick as I could. They went the length of the street with their horrible noise; and then I heard them scratching at the doors and windows of the barn. I could have shot them easily in the bright moonlight; but I remember that I didn't do so. CHAPTER VIII I begin my Letters to my Mother and start my Fortifications: then I very foolishly go away, meet with an Accident, and see Something which throws me into the utmost Terror. The next day, the nineteenth of December, was Sunday. I had been left alone (or, rather, let me say the truth, I had like a fool refused to go) on Friday, which seems in this case to have been unlucky for me, however it may ordinarily be. I woke up early, half cramped with the weight of the bed-clothes, I had piled on so many; but I was none too warm, either. I put out my drawbridge and got back to the hotel and started the fire. Outside the thermometer stood close to thirty-five degrees below zero, but the sun was rising bright and dazzling into a clear, blue sky. Kaiser's leg was no better, and Pawsy was still nervous and kept looking at the windows as if she expected wolves to bolt in head-first; and I did not blame her much. It seemed to me that the wolves had howled most of the night. I only wished that the timber beyond Frenchman's Butte and the coteaux and the Chain of Lakes were a hundred miles away, for without them there would have been no wolves, or nothing but little prairie wolves or coyotes, which, of course, don't amount to much. As soon as my own fire was started I went about town and got the others going; this I called "bringing the town to life." As I stood at the depot and watched the long columns of smoke from the chimneys it scarcely seemed that I was the only inhabitant of the town. After I had had breakfast and done up the work at the barn, I sat down in the office and was glad enough that it was Sunday. I suddenly thought of a way to spend the day, and in ten minutes I was at something which I did every Sunday while I stayed at Track's End. This was to write a letter to my mother, stamp and direct it, and drop it in the slot of the post-office door. Of course it would not go very soon, but if nothing happened it would go some time; and, I thought, if I am killed or die in this dreadful place, the letters may be the only record she will ever have of my life here.