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Stefan took his cap and fitted it over his great shock of hair, but at this moment Maigan rose and went to the door, whining. "Some one ban comin', but it ain't Papineau," said Stefan. It proved to be Mrs. Papineau, hurrying down the path and carrying a basket. She explained that the cow had had a calf, hence her delay.

A shout had come from the little lumber road and Maigan was barking at the door excitedly, in spite of the older woman's scolding. The toboggan slithered over the snow and there was a patter of dogs' feet. Madge threw the door open and let in a man in a great coonskin coat, who was carrying a bag.

Her hands had become quite warm again; she passed one of them over her brow as if this motion might have dispelled some strange vision. The big dog, Maigan, came to her and laid his sharp head and pointed cold muzzle on her lap, and she stroked it, mechanically. This, at any rate, was something genuine and friendly that had come to her.

She closed the door again very softly, and when she sat again it was with a strange feeling of contentment, or at any rate a surcease of bitter thoughts, which affected her gently, like the heat of the little stove. Maigan soon scratched at the door again, and through the frosted glass Madge saw Mrs. Papineau approaching. She was looking rather tired and dismal.

It was one of the things that were always rising up in order to crush struggling men and women. Another hour elapsed, that had been cruelly long, when Maigan suddenly leaped up and stood before the door, with hair bristling all over him and standing like a ridge along his back.

While the start was made at a good pace little more than a couple of hundred yards had been covered before Hugo realized that he was going ever so slowly. Maigan was stopping all the time and waiting for him. What on earth was the matter? He judged that the poor night's sleep had had some ill effect upon him. It couldn't be his shoulder. Certainly not!

Once he half promised to come to a barn-dance in which Scotty Humphrey would play the fiddle, and she watched for him, eagerly, but he never turned up, explaining a few days later that his dog Maigan, an acquisition of a couple of months before, had gone lame and that it would have been a shame to leave the poor old fellow alone.

But it did not take a very long time before her eyes closed and she was deep in slumber that was heavy and dreamless. Maigan came and curled up beside her. He thoroughly approved of her. It was only after midday that she awoke, startled, as if conscious of having been remiss in her duty, and raised herself quickly to a sitting posture. "Is is everything all right?" she asked, anxiously.

Upon the floor, stretched out upon an old deerskin close to the stove, Maigan was sleeping more profoundly, though now and then he whined and sighed in his slumber, perhaps dreaming of hares and porcupines. A cricket ensconced beneath the flat stones under the stove began to chirp, shrilly.

She had seized Madge's hands in her own big and capable ones, with the never-failing hospitality and friendliness of the wilderness, and led her indoors at once. Hugo let Maigan loose, with a word of warning, for the other dogs had begun to circle about him jealously, and growled a little, probably for the sake of form, for they took good care to keep out of reach of his long fangs.