The second winter had come, sealing up the gloomy land till it rang like
iron at the touch, then covering it deep with snow and polishing its
mute white face with hoar-frost and hail driven onward by the fierce
Arctic gales. An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a
chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might
travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early
twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves,
the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless,
hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead.
When the Moon of Famine came, the silence was rudely broken. Before
daylight one morning, when the air was so tense and still that a whisper
set it tinkling like silver bells, the rallying cry of the wolves rolled
down from a mountain top; and the three cubs, that had waited long for
the signal, left their separate trails far away and hurried to join the
old leader.
When the sun rose that morning one who stood on the high ridge of the
Top Gallants, far to the eastward of Harbor Weal, would have seen seven
trails winding down among the rocks and thickets.
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