It was the last days of December. There had been a merry Christmas festival and the snow had lain thick on house and slope. Wolves were now on the trail. Then Marina felt the first stirring of her child; soft, gentle movements, like the touch of eiderdown upon her body. She was filled with a joy, and pressed her hands softly and tenderly to her side; then sang a lullaby of how her son should become a great hunter and a thousand and three hundred , a thousand and three hundred bears, a thousand and three hundred ermines, and take the chief village beauty as his wife!  
There was frost, the night, and stillness outside—the stillness that whispers of death. Wolves crept up to the plot of land, sat on their hind-legs and howled long and at the sky.
 
In the spring the shores of the river were stre............