et, and
around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that
was almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped
down, her head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested
ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she
could see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears,
with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and down
against the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and her tongue
lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that she was pleased
and satisfied.

One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his
sleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright
world without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow. When he
dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of
running water, and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had come
back, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him. Life was
stirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life
under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the
shackles of the frost.

He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up.
He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field
of vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and
settled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his
heating. Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw.
Then he woke up. There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a
lone mosquito. It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in
a dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. He
could resist the call of the world no longer. Besides, he was hungry.

He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she
only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to
find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He
went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the
trees, was yet hard and crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he
came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had
found game, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the melting
snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on
top lightly as ever.

He paused at the