And this necessity bore down upon him like the wind.

The pack, whether guided by man or beast, was driving straight at him, and it was less than a quarter of a mile away when Philip drew himself up in the spruce.

His breath came quick, and his heart was thumping like a drum, for as he climbed up the slender refuge that was scarcely larger in diameter than his arm he remembered the time when he had hung up a thousand pounds of moose meat on cedars as thick as his leg, and the wolves had come the next night and gnawed them through as if they had been paper.

From his unsteady perch ten feet off the ground he stared out into the starlit Barren.
Then came the other sound.

It was the swift chug, chug, chug of galloping feet--of hoofs breaking through the crust of the snow.