wn on you like a tempest, giving you a big scare and a
monkey scramble into the nearest tree before he is satisfied.

Within the next hour I counted seven moose, old and young, from the
canoe; and when we ran ashore at twilight to the camping ground on the
big lake, the tracks of an enormous bull were drawn sharply across our
landing. The water was still trickling into them, showing that he had
just vacated the spot at our approach.

How do I know it was a bull? At this season the bulls travel constantly,
and the points of the hoofs are worn to a clean, even curve. The cows,
which have been living in deep retirement all summer, teaching their
ungainly calves the sounds and smells and lessons of the woods, travel
much less; their hoofs, in consequence, are generally long and pointed
and overgrown.

Two miles above our camp was a little brook, with an alder swale on one
side and a dark, gloomy spruce tangle on the other--an ideal spot for a
moose to keep her little school, I thought, when I discovered the place
a few days later. There were tracks on the shore, plenty of them; and I
knew I had only to watch long enough to see the mother and her calf, and
to catch a glimpse, perhaps, of what no man has ever yet seen clearly;
that is, a moose teaching her little one how to hide his bulk; how to
move noiselessly and undiscovered through underbrush where, one would
think, a fox must make his presence known; how to take a windfall on the
run; how to breast down a young birch or maple tree and keep it under
his body while he feeds on the top,--and a score of other things that
every moose must know before he is fit to take care of himself in the
big woods.

I went there one afternoon in my canoe, grasped a few lily stems to hold
the little craft steady, and snuggled down till only my head showed
above the gunwales, so as to make canoe and man look as much like an
old, wind-blown log as possible. It was getting toward the hour when I
knew the cow would be hungry, but while it was yet too light to bring
her little one to the open shore. After an hour's watching, the cow came
cautiously down the brook. She stopped short at sight of the floating
log; watched it steadily for two or three minutes, wigwagging her ears;
then began to feed greedily on the lily pads that fringed all the shore.
When she went back I followed, guided now by the crack of a twig, now by
a swaying of brush tops, now by the flip of a nervous ear or the push of