“I hear and obey, O Queen,”growled the Wolf, and immediately he shot away into the snow and darkness, as quickly as a hor gallop.In a few minutes he had called another wolf and was with him down on the dam sniffing at the Beavers’hou.But of cour they found it empty.It would have been a dreadful thing for the Beavers and the children if the night had remained fine, for the wolves would then have been able to follow their trail-ao one would have overtaken them before they had got to the cave.But now that the snow had begun again the st was cold and even the footprints were covered up.
Meanwhile the dwarf whipped up the reindeer, and the Witd Edmund drove out uhe archway and on and away into the darkness and the cold.This was a terrible journey for Edmund, who had no coat.Before they had been going quarter of an hour, all the front of him was covered with snow—he soon stopped trying to shake it off becau, as quickly as he did that, a new lot gathered, and he was so tired.Soon he was wet to the skin.And oh, how mirable he was！It didn’t look now as if the Witteo make him a King.All the things he had said to make himlf believe that she was good and kind and that her side was really the right side souo him silly now.He would have given anything to meet the others at this moment—eveer！The only way to fort himlf now was to try to believe that the whole thing was a dream and that he might wake up at any moment.And as they went on, hour after hour, it did e to em like a dream.
This lasted lohan I could describe even if I wrote pages and pages about it.But I will skip on to the time when the snow had stopped and the m had e and they were rag along in the daylight.And still they went on and on, with no sound but the everlasting swish of the snow and the creaking of the reindeer’s harness.And then at last the Witch said.“What have we here?Stop！”and they did.
How Edmund hoped she was going to say something about breakfast！But she had stopped for quite a different reason.A little way off at the foot of a tree sat a merry party, a squirrel and his wife with their children and two satyrs and a dwarf and an old dog-fox, all on stools round a table.Edmund couldn’t quite e what they were eating, but it smelled lovely and there emed to be decorations of holly and he wasn’t at all sure that he didn’t e something like a plum pudding.At the moment when the sledge stopped, the Fox, who was obviously the oldest perso, had just rin to its feet, holding a glass in its right paw as if it was going to say something.But when the whole party saw the sledge stopping and who was in it, all the gaiety went out of their faces.The father squirrel stopped eating with his fork half-way to his mouth and one of the satyrs stopped with its fork actually in its mouth, and the baby squirrels squeaked with terror.