"Most annoying," agreed the banker's wife, sympathetically; "it is the
intense cold, I expect, it breaks the old people up. It has been
unusually cold this year."

"The frost is the sharpest that has been known in December for many
years," said the Baron.

"And, of course, she is quite old," said the Baroness; "I wish I had
given her notice some weeks ago, then she would have left before this
happened to her. Why, Wappi, what is the matter with you?"

The small, woolly lapdog had leapt suddenly down from its cushion and
crept shivering under the sofa. At the same moment an outburst of angry
barking came from the dogs in the castle-yard, and other dogs could be
heard yapping and barking in the distance.

"What is disturbing the animals?" asked the Baron.

And then the humans, listening intently, heard the sound that had roused
the dogs to their demonstrations of fear and rage; heard a long-drawn
whining howl, rising and falling, seeming at one moment leagues away, at
others sweeping across the snow until it appeared to come from the foot
of the castle walls. All the starved, cold misery of a frozen world, all
the relentless hunger-fury of the wild, blended with other forlorn and
haunting melodies to which one could give no name, seemed concentrated in
that wailing cry.

"Wolves!" cried the Baron.

Their music broke forth in one raging burst, seeming to come from