4i 



smile and tell a story so that every child trusted 

 him. The wolves were hungry, starving hun- ~ 

 gry, he said, and wanted only a dog, or one L Mnnka 



of the pigs. And Mooka remembered with a ,- 

 bright laugh the two little unruly pigs that 

 had been taken inland as a hostage to famine, 

 and that must be carefully guarded from the 

 teeth of hungry prowlers, for they would soon 

 be needed to keep the children themselves 

 from starving. Every night at early sunset, 

 when the trees began to groan and the keen 

 winds from the mountains came whispering 

 through the woods, the two pigs were taken 

 into the snug kitchen, where with the dogs 

 they slept so close to the stove that she could 

 always smell pork a-frying. Not a husky dog 

 there but would have killed and eaten one of 

 these little pigs if he could have caught him 

 around the corner of the house after nightfall, 

 though you would never have suspected it if 

 you had seen them so close together keep- 

 ing each other warm after the fire went out. 

 And besides the dogs and the wolves there 

 were lynxes — big, round-headed, savage-look- 

 ing creatures — that came prowling out of the 



