wolf stood up, and advanced a step or two beyond her lair, grinning horribly.

66

Stay, stay, Harry!" shouted Fred, dashing on before him. "The wolf will fly at you."

The wolf took the movement as the signal of attack, and with a terrible snarl, which sounded far more ferocious than the bark or growl of a dog, flew at Fred's horse, evidently intending to pull the rider to the ground. Never had Fred been in peril so terrific. A cry of horror escaped him; he could not restrain it, but, speedily recovering his presence of mind, he began to belabour the head of the wolf. Harry, true to his promise, nothing daunted, came to his assistance, but their blows, though given with a hearty good-will, had not the slightest effect on the head of the wolf. On the contrary, they only seemed to increase her fury. She let go, but it was only to spring again with surer aim. The poor horse, torn by her fangs, reared with pain and fright, as the savage brute again sprang towards him. In another moment its fangs would have been fixed in Fred's thigh. Alas! poor fellow! his life was in dreadful jeopardy.

"Oh! what can I do; what can I do ?" cried poor Harry.

The wolf and her cubs seemed to say, "Gallop

Z

away while you can, or we will eat you up as well as your brother."

At that critical moment a rifle-shot was heard, and the wolf, with a yelp of pain and rage, let go her hold. Directly afterwards a man was seen, with a rifle in his hand, running through the forest towards them.

“Oh, you are saved!-you are saved, my brother," eried Harry, giving way to his feelings of affection.

"In merey I am," answered Fred, looking down at the wounded wolf, whom he seemed inclined to strike with his whip.

The stranger shouted to them as he advanced. They could not understand what he said, but they thought it was probably telling them not to meddle with the wolf. As soon as he came up to the spot he drew a long knife from a sheath at his side, and in the most deliberate way, evidently the result of long practice, approaching the brute from behind, plunged it into her neck.

"Bravo! bravo!" shouted Fred and Harry. "Thanks-thanks. Oh, how we wish we could

thank you in your own language."

The stranger looked up with a smile on his countenance, and the lads then recognised him as their new attendant, the Molokani, Steffanoff Saveleff.

They put out their hands to shake his. He smiled again, and pointed westward through the forest.

"Oh, but we want the skin of the beast," said Fred; "I'll keep it as a memorial of what you have done for me."

"And we may as well kill the cubs, or they will be growing up, and will soon become as unamiable as their mother," added Harry, pointing to the tree.

Steffanoff understood the action which accompanied the remark, and very soon put an end to the young wolves. He was not long, also, in flaying the she-wolf, the skin of which Fred triumphantly threw across his horse's neck. Thus, in hunter guise, they took their way through the forest. The lads chatted freely to their guide, and though he could not understand a word they said, he looked up every now and then with one of those pleasant smiles which showed that he would gladly have talked to them if he could. He seemed to know the country well, and avoiding the ruined house, which they saw a long way to the left, he took a direct road for the Count's mansion. His step was so elastic and rapid, that he kept their horses at a short trot the whole way.

The Count and his friends got home soon after they arrived, and Cousin Giles expressed no small satisfaction at seeing them. This was very much