The one attendant on his perch behind was a fur-clad statue of servitude and silence.

Maggie, leaning back, hidden to the eyes in her sables, had nothing to say to her companion.

The way lay through forests of pine--trackless, motionless, virgin.

The sun, filtering through the snow-laden branches, cast a subdued golden light upon the ruddy upright trunks of the trees.
At times a willow-grouse, white as the snow, light and graceful on the wing, rose from the branch where he had been laughing to his mate with a low, cooing laugh, and fluttered away over the trees.
"A kooropatka," said Catrina, who knew the life of the forest almost as well as Paul, whose very existence was wrapped up in these things.
Far over the summits of the pines a snipe seemed to be wheeling a sentinel round.

He followed them as they sped along, calling out all the while his deep warning note, like that of a lamb crouching beneath a hedge where the wind is not tempered.
Once or twice they heard the dismal howl of a wolf--the most melancholy, the weirdest, the most hopeless of nature's calls.