From its sheath snatched Winona her knife,
and a leg from the roebuck she severed;
With the carcass she ran for her life,--
to a low-branching oak ran the maiden;
Round the deer's neck her head-strap[BP] was tied;
swiftly she sprang to the arms of the oak-tree;
Quick her burden she drew to her side,
and higher she clomb on the branches,
While the maddened wolves battled and bled,
dealing death o'er the leg to each other;
Their keen fangs devouring the dead,--
yea, devouring the flesh of the living,
They raved and they gnashed and they growled,
like the fiends in the regions infernal;
The wide night re-echoing howled,
and the hoarse North-wind laughed o'er the slaughter.
But their ravenous maws unappeased
by the blood and the flesh of their fellows,
To the cold wind their muzzles they raised,
and the trail to the oak-tree they followed.
Round and round it they howled for the prey,
madly leaping and snarling and snapping;
But the brave maiden's keen arrows slay,
till the dead number more than the living.
All the long, dreary night-time, at bay,
in the oak sat the shivering Winona;
But the sun gleamed at last, and away
skulked the gray cowards[BQ] down through the forest.
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