no voice in all the
wilderness unfamiliar to his ears, no speech of all the wild kindreds
which he could not in rough fashion interpret. But this cry he did not
understand. Presently it was repeated, a little nearer, and a little
more convincingly strange to him. He knotted his rugged brows. A few
moments more and again it floated down the moonlight, high, quavering,
musical, yet carrying in its mysterious cadences an unmistakable menace.
Logan knew now to a certainty that it was a sound he had never heard
before; and he knew what it was, though he refused to acknowledge it to
himself, because it was a refutation of many of his most dogmatic
pronouncements.

"It _ain't_ wolves!" He muttered to himself obstinately. "Ther' ain't
never been a wolf in New Brunswick!"

But even as he spoke, the sinister cry arose again, nearer and yet
nearer; and he was obliged to confess to himself that, whatever it was,
it was on his trail, and he was likely to know more about it within a
few minutes. He was not alarmed, but he was annoyed, both at the
upsetting of his theories and at the absence of his gun. Undoubtedly,
these Charlotte County romancers had been right. There _were_ wolves in
New Brunswick. He was ready to apologize for having so sarcastically
questioned it.

In spite of the fact that his dignity as a woodsman would not permit him
to be alarmed, he could not but recognize that the cry upon his trail
was made up of a number of voices, and that a number of wolves might be
capable of making things very unpleasant for him. He remembered,
uncomfortably, that in this weather, with the snow so hard that the deer
could run their fastest upon it, the wolves must be extremely hungry.
The more he thought of this fact the more clearly he realized that the
wolves must be very hungry indeed, to dare to trail a man. He had been
walking as fast as he could; but now he broke into a long, swinging
lope, his moccasined feet padding with a soft whisper upon the snow. For
a moment he thought of ridding himself of the burden upon his back; but
this idea he rejected resentfully and with scorn. He was not going to be
robbed of his triumph by a bunch of rascally, interloping vermin like
wolves.

Meanwhile, the quavering high-pitched chorus was sweeping swiftly nearer
through the moonlight, and Logan put on a burst of speed in order to get
to a stretch of open burnt lands before his pursuers should come up with
him. If he was to have a fight fo