“Oh! you good man!  Come here and save me,” cried Aunt Janet in a frenzy of relief.  But Kalman was too busy for the moment to give heed to her cries.  As he entered, a fiercer howl arose above the din.  The wolf had seized hold of Captain’s upper lip and was grimly hanging on, while Queen was gripping savagely for the beast’s throat.  With his club Kalman struck the wolf a heavy blow, stunning it so that it released its hold on the dog.  Then, catching it by the hind leg, he hauled wolf and hounds out of the tent in one squirming mass.

“God help us!” cried the stout gentleman, darting into his own tent and poking his head out through the door.  “Keep the brute off.  There’s my gun.”

The girl screamed and ran behind Kalman.  The young man with the chubby face dropped his axe and jumped hastily into a convenient wagon.

“Shoot the bloomin’ brutes,” he cried.  “Some one bring me my gun.”

But the wolf’s days were numbered.  Queen’s powerful jaws were tearing at his throat, while Captain, having gripped him by the small of the back, was shaking him with savage fury.

“Oh! the poor thing!  Call off the dogs!” cried the girl, turning to Kalman.

“No!  No!  Don’t you think of it!” cried the man from the tent door.  “He will attack us.”

Kalman stepped forward, and beating the dogs from their quarry, drew his pistol and shot the beast through the head.

“Get back, Captain!  Back!  Back!  I say.  Down!”

With difficulty he drew the wolf from the jaws of the eager hounds, and swung it into the wagon out of the dogs’ reach.

“My word!” exclaimed the young man, leaping from the wagon with precipitate haste.  “What are you doing?”

“He won’t hurt you, sir.  He is dead.”

The young man’s red, chubby face, out of which peered his little round eyes, his red hair standing in a disordered halo about his head, his strange attire, with trailing braces and tag-ends of his night-robe hanging about his person, made a picture so weirdly funny that the girl went off into peals of laughter.

“Marjorie!  Marjorie!” cried an indignant voice, “what are ye daein’ there?  Tak’ shame to yersel’, ye hizzie.”

Marjorie turned in the direction of the voice, and again her peals of laughter burst forth.  “Oh!  Aunt Janet, you do look so funny.”  But at once the head with its aureole of curl-papers was whipped inside the tent.

“Ye’re no that fine to look at yersel’, ye shameless lassie,” cried Aunt Janet.

With a swift motion the girl put her hand to her head, gathered her garments about her, and fled to the cover of her tent, leaving Kalman and the young man together, the latter in a state of indignant wrath, for no man can bear with equanimity the ridicule of a maiden whom he is especially anxious to please.

“By Jove, sir!” he exclaimed.  “What the deuce did you mean, running your confounded dogs into a camp like that?”