Tom arose and pointed out a bullet hole above the window.

“Then th’ wolf, he goes off too, bein’ scared at th’ shootin’.

“I were home th’ next day mendin’ dog harness, when I hears th’ dogs fightin’, and I takes a look out th’ windy, and there I sees that wolf fightin’ wi’ th’ dogs, and right handy t’ th’ house.  I just takes my rifle down spry as I can, and goes out.  When th’ dogs sees me open th’ door they runs away and leaves th’ wolf apart from un, and I ups and knocks he over wi’ a bullet, sir.  I gets he fair in th’ head first shot I takes, and there be th’ skin.  ’Tis worth a good four dollars too, for ’tis an extra fine one.”

They are treacherous beasts, but, like the wolf, cowardly, these big dogs of the Labrador.  If a man should trip and fall among them, the likelihood is he would be torn to pieces by their fangs before he could help himself.  You cannot make pals of them as you can of other dogs.  They would as lief snap off the hand that reared and feeds them as not.  It is never safe for a stranger to move among a pack of them without a stick in his hand.  But a threatened kick or the swing of a menacing stick will send them off crawling and whining.

The Hudson’s Bay Company once had a dozen or so of these big fellows at Cartwright Post, in Sandwich Bay.  They were exceptionally fine dogs of the true husky breed, brought down from one of the more northerly posts, and the agent was proud of them.  This was the same agent whose dogs ran away to chum with the wolves, and I believe these were some of the same dogs.  They were splendid animals in harness, well broken and tireless travelers on the trail.

One evening, late in the fall, the agent’s wife was standing at the open door of the post house, and her little boy, a lad of about your years, was playing near the doorstep.

Labrador dogs are fed but once a day, and this is always in the evening.  It was feeding time for the dogs, and a servant down at the feed house, where the dog rations were kept, called them.  With a rush they responded.  Just when some of them were passing the post house the little boy in his play stumbled and fell.  In an instant the dogs were upon him.  The mother, with rare presence of mind, sprang forward, seized the boy, sprang back into the house and slammed the door upon the dogs.

The boy was on the ground but a moment, but in that moment he was horribly torn by the sharp fangs.  At one place his entrails were laid bare.  There were over sixty wounds on his little body.  The dogs lapped up the blood that fell upon the ground and doorstep.  That night the pack, like a pack of hungry wolves, congregated outside the window where they heard the child crying and moaning with pain and all night howled as wolves howl when they have cornered prey.

The following morning it happened providentially that Doctor Grenfell’s hospital ship steamed into Cartwright Harbor and dropped anchor.  The Doctor himself was aboard.  He took the boy under his charge and the little one’s life was saved through his skill.