ide. What we took for the echoes at first, came back amazingly
distinct from the mountains all about us. "Why," cried Vet, "those cries
are other wolves answering him!"

It is strange what a distance the smell of burned bones and scraps will
be carried to the noses of carnivorous beasts. A hunter in the woods
better not burn such refuse unless he wants to draw dangerous game about
him. It may be a wild opinion, but I haven't a doubt that the odor of
those bones drew wolves twenty-five miles off to us that night.

As soon as Vet spoke, Ed and I both knew there must be other wolves
howling. It made us feel almost frightened, there, in the dead of night,
for we soon found that the creatures were drawing together and coming
nearer, large numbers of them. Ed loaded the gun again.

"But what good will that do if there's a pack of 'em?" Vet exclaimed.

If we had had a log camp with a door, we shouldn't have felt uneasy; but
our open shed would not afford us safety. There was no time to be lost,
for the wolves were racing and scurrying about the swamp, not half a
mile away.

"I'm going into that old stooping hemlock!" said Vet, and he ran for it.

This large mossy hemlock was a few yards to the right of our camp. It
leaned down and rested partly in a great elm that stood on the bank of
the stream.

Any one could make a run and scramble up the trunk of this tree to the
first limbs, twelve or fourteen feet. Ed and I only waited to place two
big stones from the arch upon our pork cask, and also to throw our
flour-bag and meal-bag upon the roof of the shed. Then we scrambled
after Vet.

We got amongst the green boughs, and perched ourselves as comfortably as
we could. There was no wind, and the temperature could not have been
below freezing, much.

We had but just got into the hemlock when two or three wolves ran by,
and were soon scurrying about our "arch" and camp,--going and coming,
here and there, uttering, now and then, a quick, eager yelp, like hounds
hunting a track.

Though it was pretty dark, we could distinguish their dusky forms. We
could hear them eating, too, the bones, scraps and offal we hand thrown
out,--quarrelling, snapping and fighting with one another.

[Illustration (woods-2) Trying Oil]

Several times, one or more of them were on the shed-roof. They dragged
off the meal-bag, and tugged at the cloths, and dragged the bag about
the ground. Then they began to jump into the little spotted maple. This