“And I,” said another, “was once attacked when on foot.  I wore a new pelisse of sheep-skin and a pair of reindeer-skin boots.  Wolves are fond of deer and sheep, and they eat skin and all when they have a chance.  The brutes stripped off my pelisse and boots without harming my skin.  Just as I was preparing to give them my woolen trousers, some peasants came to my relief.”  Although I feared my auditors would be incredulous, I told the story of David Crockett when treed by a hundred or more prairie wolves.  “I shot away all my ammunition, and threw away my gun and knife among them, but it was no use.  Finally, I thought I would try the effect of music and began to sing ’Old Hundred.’  Before I finished the first verse every wolf put his fore paws to his ears and galloped off.”

My story did not produce the same results upon my audience, but almost as marked a one, for all appreciated its humor, and before I had fairly finished a burst of laughter resounded through the room, and it was unanimously voted that Americans could excel in all things, not excepting Wolf Stories.

[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE]

CHAPTER XLVIII.

The many vehicles in motion made a good road twelve hours after the storm ceased.  The thermometer fell quite low, and the sharp frost hardened the track and enabled the horses to run rapidly.  I found the temperature varying from 25 deg. to 40 deg. below zero at different exposures.  This was cold enough, in fact, too cold for comfort, and we were obliged to put on all our furs.  When fully wrapped I could have filled the eye of any match-making parent in Christendom, so far as quantity is concerned.  The doctor walked as if the icy and inhospitable North had been his dwelling-place for a dozen generations, and promised to continue so a few hundred years longer.  We were about as agile as a pair of prize hogs, or the fat boy in the side show of a circus.

My beard was the greatest annoyance that showed itself to my face, and I regretted keeping it uncut.  It was in the way in a great many ways.  When it was outside my coat I wanted it in, and when it was inside it would not stay there.  It froze to my collar and seemed studying the doctrine of affinity.  A sudden motion in such case would pull my chin painfully and tear away a few hairs.  It was neither long nor heavy, but could hold a surprising quantity of snow and ice.  It would freeze into a solid mass, and when thawing required much attention.  The Russian officers shave the chin habitually, and wear their hair pretty short when traveling.  I made a resolution to carry my beard inviolate to St. Petersburg, but frequently wished I had been less rash.  A mustache makes a very good portable thermometer for low temperatures.  After a little practice one can estimate within a few degrees any stage of cold below zero, Fahrenheit.  A mustache will frost itself from the breath and stiffen slowly at zero, but It does not become solid.  It needs no waxing to enable it to hold its own when the scale descends to -10 deg. or thereabouts, and when one experiences -15 deg. and so on downward, he will feel as if wearing an icicle on his upper lip.  The estimate of the cold is to be based on the time required for a thorough hardening of this labial ornament, and of course the rule is not available if the face is kept covered.