32 
Northern Trails . Book I 
wanted only a dog, or one of the pigs. And Mooka 
remembered with a bright laugh the two unruly pigs 
that had been taken inland as a hostage to famine, and 
that must be carefully guarded from the teeth of hun¬ 
gry 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, keeping each other warm after 
the fire went out. And besides the dogs and the 
wolves there were lynxes — big, round-headed, savage¬ 
looking creatures—that came prowling out of the deep 
woods every night, hungry for a taste of the little pigs; 
and now and then an enormous polar bear, that had 
landed from an iceberg, would shuffle swiftly and fear¬ 
lessly among the handful of little cabins, leaving his 
great footprints in every yard and tearing to pieces, as 
if made of straw, the heavy log pens to which some of 
the fishermen had foolishly confided their pigs or sheep. 
He even entered the woodsheds and rummaged about 
