Up and up the mountain they went--sometimes losing the track from the great springs the wolf took--now across a great chasm which they had to go round the head of, now up the face of a rock too steep for the snow to lie upon, so that there was no print of his horrid feet.
"But at last, almost at the top of the mountain, they saw before them two dark spots in a little hollow, and when they reached it, there was the wolf, dead in a mass of frozen blood and trampled snow.

It was a huge, gaunt, gray, meagre carcass, with the foam frozen about its jaws, and stabbed in many places, which showed the fight had been a close one.

All the snow was beaten about, as if with many feet, which showed still more plainly what a tussle it had been.

A little farther on lay Alister, as if asleep, stretched at full length, with his face to the sky.

He had been dead for many hours, they thought, but the smile had not faded which his spirit left behind as it went.