that he said he would be back by ten. She wished to know the hour. It was still pitch dark, but she went to the chimney shelf, and opened the clock, and with her delicate fingers and nice touch she felt for the hour and the minute hands, and for the raised figures, and ascertained that it was already after ten. She felt again, and was sure there was no mistake. After ten, and Mark not yet returned! What could have detained him? This source of anxiety was beginning to add its sting to the others, when a new ground of alarm, of despair, fixed her panic-stricken where she stood. The wolves, who had not ceased to howl and cry, and hurl themselves against the walls, now led by a surer instinct, were careering around and around the cabin, leaping up at the walls, and leaping up at the windowsashes, which shook at each bound! The clamour outside was now deafening, appalling. She heard the frail sashes shake-she heard them give way-she heard the whole hungry, horrible pack burst with full cry into the room; and mortal terror whirled away her consciousness, and, with an agonizing cry to Heaven, she fell to the floor insensible.

back, Rosalie found. The room was quiet, candle on the hearth,

When consciousness came herself lying upon her bed. cool, and dimly lighted by a whose glare was shaded from her eyes by an intervening chair with a shawl thrown over it. Mark was standing by her, bathing her face with cold water. As memory returned, she shuddered violently several times; and her first words, gasped out, were, “The wolves! Oh! the wolves!"

"They are gone, love; put to flight!" said Mark Sutherland, soothingly.

"And you-you?" she asked, wildly gazing at him.

"Safe, as you see, love!" he answered, as he lifted her head, and placed a glass of cold water to her lips.

"How did it happen, Mark?" she questioned, as he laid her head once more upon the pillow.

"What happen, love?"

"My escape, your safety, and the flight of the wolves."

"Dear Rose, we had better not revert to the subject again to-night. Try to compose yourself."

"I cannot! If I close my eyes and lie still, I hear again those dreadful howls-I see again those glaring eyes and ghastly fangs-I live over again the terrible danger."

"My dear Rosalie, there was really no very great danger, and it was all over as soon as I reached the spot with fire-arms," said Mark, calmly, and wishing to depreciate the peril she had passed, and restore her to quietness.

"Yet tell me about it-if you will talk to me about the escape I shall not brood over the appalling".

She shuddered, and was silent.

"There is really very little to tell, Rosalie. As I approached the house on my return home I heard the howling of the wolves. I surmised the truth instantly-that they were the same pack the neighbours had been after for the last few days-that the smell of the fresh meat we had brought over the prairie and

into the forest had decoyed them to the cabin, from whence there was no light to scare them. I hurried on as fast as possible, and soon came upon the cabin, and found a pack of perhaps a dozen wolves baying around the house, and leaping and scratching at the walls. They were prairie wolves—a small, cowardly race-who go in packs, and who are generally very easily driven off. I first of all picked up and threw a billet of wood at them. I forgot, dear Rose, that our window had no better defence than a sheet, or else I never thought of it at all, for when I threw the piece of wood, it not only passed through the pack of wolves, but on through the window-place, too-scattering the animals, but also making an opening, through which several of them, in their efforts to escape, leaped into the house".

"It was then I fainted," said Rosalie.

"I found you lying on the floor, insensible."

"But you and the wolves?"

"A very short skirmish served to put the enemy to flight. I succeeded in killing only two of them-two that had leaped before me in at the window-the others escaped."

As Rosalie continued to tremble, he added:

"They are really not a formidable antagonist, my dear. I have heard a pioneer say, that he would as lief as not tumble himself, unarmed, down into a dingle full of them, and trust to his muscular strength and courage to conquer. That might have been all boasting; still I know they are a dastardly race; and if you had known it, and could have raised a great noise, and thrown some heavy missiles among them

4

from the loft above, you would have put them all to flight."

"Ah, but if they had got in while I lay here insensible from terror, they would have destroyed me," thought Rosalie. But, unwilling to give pain, she withheld the expression of those terrible thoughts.

More words of soothing influence Mark dropped into her ear, until at length her spirits were calmed, and she was enabled to join him in earnest thanksgiving to Heaven for their preservation. He fanned her till she dropped asleep. And then, late as it was, he went and busied himself with many things that remained to be done-putting glass in the windows, cutting up and salting down the nearly fatal quarter of beef, ripping off the head of the barrel of flour, &c. and doing all so quietly as not to disturb the sleeper.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CABIN KEEPING.

"There is probation to decree,

Many and long must the trials be;

Thou shalt victoriously endure,

If that brow is true and those eyes are sure."-Browning.

A NIGHT'S undisturbed repose restored Rosalie's exhausted nervous energy. The young couple arose early in the morning to begin their first day of house, or rather cabin-keeping, for the difference of style requires a difference of term. They had anticipated

toil and privation, and had thought they were prepared to meet them. But it is one thing to think in a general way about work and want, and quite another to feel them in all their irritating and exhausting details; and the first day of housekeeping in the forest log cabin taught them this difference. They had no garden, no cow, no poultry, and there was no market where to procure the necessaries that these should have supplied. Everything that could be bought at the village shops had been provided; yet their first breakfast consisted of coffee without cream or milk, and biscuits without butter. But mutual love, and hope, and trust, sweetened the meal, and even their little privations furnished matters of jest. And when breakfast was over, and Mark was preparing to bid his "little sweetheart," as he called her, farewell for the day, and promising to return by four o'clock, she gaily asked him what he would like for dinner, and he replied by ordering a bill of fare, that might have been furnished by some famous Eastern or European hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of their merriment, she thought of the wolves and trembled-yet restrained the expression of her fears. But the eye of affection read her thoughts, and Mark hastened to assure her that there was no more to dread-that the cabin was the last place on earth that the same animals would seek again

-that they would not come within sight of its smoking chimney. Her trust in his judgment and his truthfulness completely reassured her doubting heart, and set it at perfect rest. And she let him go to his business with a gay, glad smile.

She watched him winding up the little narrow path, and disappearing among the trees, and then she turned