Happy as she had been before, Nancy was now in the seventh heaven of content. There was no more dulness and waiting for her now, when Boris had set forth for a full day's hunting in the forest and left her to look after household matters at home. That little baby was companion and occupation and amusement to her, all in one tiny person, and the days passed right joyously at Karapselka.

When spring came, and the frost and snow had disappeared from the woods, Nancy loved to take her little companion in the tiny hand-cart and pass a pleasant hour or two wandering beneath the waving pine trees, enjoying the fine air, and listening to the thousand and one sounds of awakening forest life. The little birds populating the tree-tops were noisy at this time of year, and there were the crooning of the amorous blackcock to listen for, and the tok-tok of the gluhar, or capercailzie, while in the distance might always be heard the screaming of cranes in some damp corner of the woods, as they kept up their constant sentry-cry. There was plenty both to see and hear in these glorious woods—there always is for those who have eyes and ears, and know how to employ them to advantage—and Nancy was never weary of strolling with her baby asleep in her cart into the delightful glades which lay within easy reach of her home.

Since her adventure with the bear, Boris had insisted that she should go armed, and had presented her with a neat hunting-knife, without which she was never, he said, to stir from home, were it but for a hundred paces into the forest and back again. So Nancy went armed, though she declared she would be far too frightened to use her dagger if she were to encounter a second bear anything like the first. But Boris explained carefully how the knife should be used in emergency, and how not to use it, of which there appeared to be a great many ways.

One day, while out strolling as usual in the forest, Nancy suddenly caught sight of two small animals whose aspect was quite unfamiliar to her, which was odd, for she was as well acquainted with the life of the forest by this time as any Russian peasant-woman who had lived in it from childhood. The little creatures were somewhat like puppies, with a suggestion of fox, and when Nancy ran after them they scuttled away with comical little barks.

Nancy mentioned this matter to Boris on his return from hunting.

"What colour were they?" Boris asked.

Nancy said they were of a yellowish gray.

"They were young wolves, then," said Boris; "and if you see them again, catch one for me if you can—I long to possess a tame wolf-cub; but have your knife handy in case of the mother interfering."

It so fell out that a few days after this conversation Nancy did see these same little creatures again, four of them together; whereupon, mindful of her husband's great wish to possess one, she left the baby asleep in its hand-cart and gave chase. The wolflings scampered bravely, and led her up and down and about in every direction, until Nancy bethought herself that she was getting winded, and besides that she might easily get confused, if she went further, as to the position in which she had left her precious little Katie. So she gave up the hunt, and returned towards the place whence she started.

Then she realized how just had been her fears, for it was with difficulty that she succeeded at last in retracing her steps to the place where the hand-cart had been left. To her surprise and alarm she saw that the cart lay over upon its side; and hastening towards it she perceived, to her unspeakable consternation and horror, that it was empty.

Poor Nancy was not the person to sit down and do nothing in an emergency; but the horror of the discovery she had just made bereft her for some few moments of the power of action as well as of thought. Her mind instantly flew back to the words of Boris telling her to beware of the mother-wolf, and for several minutes these words danced in her brain. The mother-wolf, it was the mother-wolf! it had taken her darling child in order to feed those detestable little gray scuttling things which she had chased through the trees! While she had been senselessly hunting the cubs, the mother-wolf—some lean-looking, gray, skulking brute—had crept secretly up and carried away her Katie, her darling baby.

In another moment Nancy had drawn her sharp little dagger, and with shriek upon shriek had rushed wildly into the forest and disappeared among the pines, whither she knew not, but full of a wild determination to find that gray thief and force her to deliver up to her the priceless thing she had stolen.

When Boris returned home late in the afternoon he was somewhat surprised to find that Nancy was not at home. She and the baby had gone for a stroll in the woods, the old servant explained, and had not been home to dinner.

"God grant the lieshui [wood-spirits] have not got hold of them, or done them some injury!" the old fellow concluded, sighing deeply. "The forest is a terrible place, and for my part I have always warned the barina."

Boris did not stay to exchange words with his faithful old serf, but taking a horse from the stable galloped off as fast as he could into the forest, shouting Nancy's name in every direction. Up and down, and through and through every glade and pathway, wherever there was room for the horse to pass, Boris rode; and ever as he rode he shouted Nancy's name, until his voice grew hoarse, and the cob waxed weary, and the light began to wane, and still he neither found trace nor heard sound of his lost wife and child.

Still he rode on and on, and would have ridden all night rather than return home to misery and uncertainty; but when he was upwards of twelve miles from the house, and his heart was despairing and his spirit mad within him, he heard at length a faint reply to his calling. Lashing up his tired horse he dashed on, and presently, to his infinite joy and relief, he came upon Nancy sitting worn and utterly fagged out beneath a tree, crying bitterly, and nursing in her arms a portion of her baby's frock which she had picked up in the forest.

For many minutes poor Nancy could do no more than cling to her husband's broad breast, and sob and weep as though her very heart were melted within her for sorrow. At last she held up the tiny torn dress, and murmured, "The mother-wolf," and then betook herself once more to her bitter crying.

Boris realized at once what had happened—realized also that he had arrived far too late to do any good; for the wolf, even if it had not at once eaten the poor baby but carried it away to feast upon at leisure, must now be far away beyond the reach of pursuit. In his great joy and thankfulness to have found Nancy safe, Boris did not feel in all its poignancy, in these first moments, that grief for the child which he was destined to suffer acutely afterwards. His chief thought was for Nancy; she must be got home and at once, that was the most important duty of the moment. As for the baby, it was gone beyond recall, and would assuredly never be seen again by mortal eye.

"Come, Nancy," he said, when he had comforted and petted his poor stricken wife, "let me get you home, and then I will scour the forest on a fresh horse. You need food and rest. If our Katie is alive, I shall not cease searching till she is found; if not, I shall not rest until I have killed every wolf within fifty miles of the house!"

But Nancy would not hear of it. "Oh no, no," she cried, "I shall never go home till we have found our darling. She is alive, I am sure of it. See, there is no blood on the frock; the wolf has not hurt her. It stole her away because I was wicked to chase her little ones. It is wrong to catch the wild animals of God's forest and enslave them. We ought to have known it, Boris."

The frock had no stain of blood, that was true enough; and the circumstance gave Boris some slight hope that it might be as the stricken mother had suggested, though the chances were much against it. Boris had heard often enough stories of how wolves had taken and befriended babies, allowing them to grow up with the cubs. His own experience of the ferocity and greed of these animals, however, had always led him to laugh at such tales as old women's yarns, unworthy of a moment's serious consideration. Nancy had heard of them too, that was evident, and was now leaning upon the hope that in poor little Katie's disappearance was living evidence of their truth.

No persuasions would induce the sorrowing mother, therefore, to give up the search. All night long Boris walked beside the horse, supporting his weary little wife, who could scarcely sit in the saddle for weakness and fatigue; and not until the horse was unable to go further would she consent to pause in the work of quartering the ground in every direction, and riding through every clump of cover, in case the beloved object of her search should have been concealed in it.

When morning came, and the sun rose warm and bright over the aspen bushes, Boris found a place where the horse could obtain a meal of coarse grass, and where Nancy, upon a soft couch of heather, could lie down and take the rest she so greatly required. He was lucky enough to find and kill a hare, and with the help of a fire of sticks, which no man in Russia was better able to kindle than he, an excellent improvised breakfast was soon prepared. Afterwards, Nancy slept for several hours while Boris watched, listening intently the while in the hope of hearing the sound of a wolf-howl, which might possibly indicate the whereabouts of the thief. But the hours passed, and there was nothing to guide him to take one direction more than another, and poor Boris knew well enough that he had set himself a hopeless task; nevertheless, for Nancy's sake, he agreed to continue the search for the rest of that day, and the forest was hunted as it had never been hunted before, until his feet ached with walking, and Nancy was but half-conscious for sheer weariness. Then Boris took the law into his own hands and directed the horse for home, and the weary trio reached Karapselka as the shadows of night fell upon the forest behind them.

The next morning a peasant came early and inquired for the barin. Boris, who was about to set out once more upon his hopeless search, received the man unwillingly, as one who is in a hurry and cannot stop to discuss trifles.

"Well?" he said; "quick, what is it?"

The man scratched his head for inspiration, then he cleared his throat and began the business upon which he had come. He had been in the forest yesterday, he said, collecting firewood. The winters were cold, he proceeded, and the poor peasants must spend a good deal of their time during summer in laying up a store of fuel for the winter. But it was God's will that the peasants should be always poor.

"Get to the point," said Boris impatiently, "or I must go without hearing it."

That would be a pity, the man continued, for he believed that when the barin heard what he had to tell, the barin would give him a nachaiok (tea-money) for the news. He had been in the forest collecting wood, he repeated, when suddenly he saw a sight which filled him with fear—nothing less than a great she-wolf with a whole litter of young ones following at her heels. The man had at once thought to himself, "Here now is a chance of a nachaiok from Boris Ivanitch, who is a great hunter, and will love to hear of a family of wolves close at hand." But the moment after, said the peasant, he saw something which quite altered the aspect of the affair. When the wolf saw him, she had stopped and picked up from the ground where it lay close to her a small creature something like a human child, and which cried like one, but which was of course one of the lieshui, or wood-spirits, which often enough take the form of babe or old man. The she-wolf took up the creature in its mouth and trotted away with it into the forest. "Oho," the man had thought, "still more shall I earn a nachaiok from Boris Ivanitch; for now I must warn him that if he meets with this particular she-wolf and her brats he must give them a wide berth and be sure not to shoot or injure them, for this wolf is the handmaid of the lieshui, and woe to him who interferes with the favoured creatures of those touchy and tricksy spirits, for they would assuredly lure him to his destruction when next he ventured deep into the heart of the forest."

Boris hastily bade the man follow him and point out the exact spot where he had seen this wonderful sight. The peasant showed a place within a short distance of the house, and added that the wolf family had passed at sunset on the previous evening.

Here then was joyous news for Nancy; her babe had been alive and well some thirty-six hours after its disappearance, and had actually been seen within call of its own home, while its distracted parents had scoured the woods for a score of miles in every direction, little dreaming that the child was left far behind.

Nancy received the news calmly, but with the intensest joy and gratitude. "I was sure our darling was alive," she said; "but oh, Boris, if only it were winter and we could track the thief down! What are we to do, and how are we to find the child before the she-wolf carries her far away, or changes her mind and devours her?" And Nancy wailed aloud in her helplessness and misery.

There was nothing to be done but to search the forest daily, taking care to do nothing and permit nothing to be done in the village to frighten the wolves, and scare them away far into the depths of the forest, where there would be no hope of ever finding them again. Accordingly no day went by but was spent by Boris and his ever-hopeful but distracted wife in quartering the woods far and near, the pair going softly and speaking seldom, and that in whispers, for fear of scaring the wolves away.

But the days passed, and the weeks also, and a month came, and slowly there crept over their souls the certainty that their labour would be in vain, and that they had seen the last of their beloved child. Still, they would never entirely lose hope, and day by day they continued their wearisome tramping, sometimes going afoot, sometimes riding when their feet grew sore with the constant walking. Another fortnight went by, and it was now high summer, and still they were childless.