e as not, Granny," responded the girl, beating the batter with an
impatience that belied the cheerfulness of her tone. "But what does it
matter, anyway? We're all right here for a month!"

As she spoke, however, her eyes, too, gazed out wistfully over the
buried road. She was wearying for the sound of bells and for a drive
into the Settlement.

Meanwhile, from the edge of the woods on the other side of the cabin,
hidden from the keen eyes within by the roofs of the barn and the
shed, came two great, grey, catlike beasts, creeping belly to the
snow.

Their broad, soft-padded paws were like snow shoes, bearing them up on
the wind-packed surface. Their tufted ears stood straight up, alert
for any unwonted sound. Their absurd stub tails, not four inches long,
and looking as if they had been bitten off, twitched with eagerness.
Their big round eyes, of a pale greenish yellow, and with the pupils
narrowed to upright, threadlike black slits by the blinding glare,
glanced warily from side to side with every step they took.

The lynxes had the keenest dislike to crossing the open pasture in
this broad daylight, but they had been driven by hunger to the point
where the customs and cautions of their wary kind are recklessly
thrown aside. Hunger had driven the pair to hunt together, in the hope
of together pulling down game too powerful for one to master alone.
Hunger had overcome their savage aversion to the neighbourhood of man,
and brought them out in the dark of night to prowl about the barn and
sniff longingly the warm smell of the sheep, steaming through the
cracks of the clumsy door.

Watching from under the snow-draped branches, they had observed that
only in the daytime were the sheep let out from their safe shelter
behind the clumsy door. And now, forgetting everything but the fierce
pangs that urged them, the two savage beasts came straight down the
rolling slope of the pasture towards the barn.

A few minutes later there came from the yard a wild screeching and
cackling of the hens, followed by a trampling rush and agonized
bleating. The old woman half rose from her chair, but sank back
instantly, her face creased with a spasm of pain, for she was crippled
by rheumatism. The girl dropped her big wooden spoon on the floor and
rushed to the window that looked out upon the yard. Her pale face went
paler with horror, then flushed with wrath and pity; and a fierce
light flashed into her wide blue eyes.

"It's lynxes