e cave again. It was on this adventure that he
found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it
that the young weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he
did not get lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave
and slept. And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a wider
area.

He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness,
and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found it
expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when,
assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages and
lusts.

He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray
ptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the
squirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a
moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he
never forgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of that
ilk he encountered.

But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, and
those were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some other
prowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow
always sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer
sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his
mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding
along with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.

In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The seven
ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings.
His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry
ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed
all wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew
in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to
crawl unobserved upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.

The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat,
and she never failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid
of things. It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded
upon experience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an
impression of power. His mother represented power; and as he grew older
he felt this power in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the
reproving nudge of her nose gave place to