far
too sagacious to enter upon any such struggle unnecessarily. Prowling
slowly and tirelessly, without effort, around and around the excited
prisoner, she trusted to wear him out and then take him at some deadly
disadvantage.

Weighted with the trap, and not wise enough to refrain from wasting
his strength in vain struggles, the lynx was strenuously playing his
cunning antagonist's game, when a sound came floating on the still air
which made them both instantly rigid. It was a long, thin, wavering
cry that died off with indescribable melancholy in its cadence. The
lynx crouched, with eyes dilating, and listened with terrible
intentness. The carcajou, equally interested but not terrified, stood
erect, ears, eyes and nose alike directed to finding out more about
that ominous voice. Again and again it was repeated, swiftly coming
nearer; and presently it resolved itself into a chorus of voices. The
lynx made several convulsive bounds, wrenching desperately to free his
imprisoned limb; then, recognizing the inevitable, he crouched again,
shuddering but dangerous, his tufted ears flattened upon his back,
his eyes flickering green, every tooth and claw bared for the last
battle. But the carcajou merely stiffened up her fur, in a rage at the
prospective interruption of her hunting. She knew well that the
dreadful, melancholy cry was the voice of the wolf-pack. But the
wolves were not on _her_ trail, that she was sure of; and possibly
they might pass at a harmless distance, and not discover her or her
quarry.

The listeners were not kept long in suspense. The pack, as it chanced,
was on the trail of a moose which, labouring heavily in the deep snow,
had passed, at a distance of some thirty or forty yards, a few minutes
before the carcajou's arrival. The wolves swept into view through the
tall fir trunks--five in number, and running so close that a
table-cloth might have covered them. They knew by the trail that the
quarry must be near, and, urged on by the fierce thrust of their
hunger, they were not looking to right or left. They were almost past,
and the lynx was beginning to take heart again, when, out of the tail
of his eye, the pack-leader detected something unusual on the snow
near the foot of the big rock. One fair look explained it all to him.
With an exultant yelp he turned, and the pack swept down upon the
prisoner; while the carcajou, bursting with indignation, slipped up
the nearest tree.

The captive was not