Carefully he examined the sweep of snow about the half-ruined dwelling. There were the tracks he and Dessie had made about the yard. But the smooth expanse of white between house and main road was unbroken. There had been no invaders since they had left. Thankfully, though without any lessening of his habitual apprehension, he went back to gather up the wood.

"All right?" Dessie shifted impatiently from one cold foot to the other .

"All right."

She jerked the sled into motion and plodded on along the wall where the snow had not drifted. There was a faint gleam of light in one of the windows below. Lars must be in the kitchen. Minutes later they stamped off snow and went in.

Lars Nordis raised his head as his daughter and then his brother entered. His smile of welcome was hardly more than a stretch of parchment skin over thrusting bones and Dard's secret fear deepened as he studied Lars anxiously. They were always hungry, hut tonight Lars had the appearance of a man in the last stages of starvation.

"Good haul?" he asked Dard as the boy began to shed his first layer of the sacking which served him as a coat.

"Good as we could do without the axe. Dessie got a lot of pine cones."

Lars swung around to his daughter who had squatted down before the small fire on the hearth where she began to methodically unwind the strips of burlap which were her mittens.

"Now that was lucky! Did you see anything interesting, Dessie?" He spoke to her as he might have addressed an adult.

"Just a fox." she reported gravely. "It was watching us- from under a tree. It looked cold-but Dardie said it had a home-"

"So it did, honey," Lars assured her. "A 1ittle cave or a hollow tree."

"I wish I could have brought it home. It would be nice to have a fox or a squirrel-or something-to live with us." She stretched her small, grime-encrusted, chapped hands out to the fire.