Outside the frozen windows was darkness, cold,
and night.
Demid rose from his bench, took Marina tenderly and firmly in his
arms, and led her to the bed. The lamp flickered, and in the half-
light Makar's eyes glowed. He had grown up during the winter and he
was now an adult bear--with a sombre, solemn air and a kind of clumsy
skill. He had a large flat nose and grave, good-natured eyes.
IX
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 triumphant 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 slay a thousand and three hundred elks, a
thousand and three hundred bears, a thousand and three hundred
ermines, and take the chief village beauty as his wife!
There was misty 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 dismally at the sky.
In the spring the shores of the river were strewn with wild flocks of
swans, geese, and eider-ducks. The forest resounded with the stir of
the beasts.
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