376 THE LAST WOLF. 



hollow and anxious from below, communicating this 

 intelligence. Poison at once desired them to do their 

 best, and to destroy the cubs. Soon after he heard the 

 feeble howling of the whelps, as they were attacked below, 

 and saw almost at the same time, to his great horror, a full- 

 grown wolf, evidently the dam, raging furiously at the 

 cries of her young, and now close upon the mouth of the 

 cavern, which she had approached unobserved among the 

 rocky inequalities of the place. She attempted to leap 

 down, at one bound, from the spot where she was first 

 seen ; in this emergency, Poison instinctively threw himself 

 forward on the wolf, and succeeded in catching a firm hold 

 of the animal's long and bushy tail, just as the fore part of 

 the body was within the narrow entrance of the cavern. 

 He had, unluckily, placed his gun against a rock when 

 aiding the boys in their descent, and could not now reacli 

 it. Without apprising the lads below of their imminent 

 peril, the stout hunter kept a firm grip of the wolf's tail, 

 which he wound round his left arm ; and although the 

 maddened brute scrambled and twisted, and strove with 

 all her might, to force herself down to the rescue of her cubs, 

 Poison was just able, with the exertion of all his strength, 

 to keep her from going forward. In the midst of this 

 singular struggle, which passed in silence, for the wolf 

 was mute, and the hunter, either from the engrossing 

 nature of his exertions, or from his unwillingness to alarm 

 the boys, spake not a word at the commencement of the 

 conflict, his son within the cave, finding the light ex- 

 cluded from above for so long a space, asked in Gaelic, 

 and in an abrupt tone, " Father, what is keeping the light 

 from us?" "If the root of the tail breaks," replied he, 



