th it as he played with the rabbit fur. Each day
thereafter he went a little nearer the opening through which Kazan
passed from the windfall into the big world outside. Finally came the
time when he reached the opening and crouched there, blinking and
frightened at what he saw, and now Gray Wolf no longer tried to hold him
back but went out into the sunshine and tried to call him to her. It was
three days before his weak eyes had grown strong enough to permit his
following her, and very quickly after that Ba-ree learned to love the
sun, the warm air, and the sweetness of life, and to dread the darkness
of the closed-in den where he had been born.

That this world was not altogether so nice as it at first appeared he
was very soon to learn. At the darkening signs of an approaching storm
one day Gray Wolf tried to lure him back under the windfall. It was her
first warning to Ba-ree and he did not understand. Where Gray Wolf
failed, nature came to teach a first lesson. Ba-ree was caught in a
sudden deluge of rain. It flattened him out in pure terror and he was
drenched and half drowned before Gray Wolf caught him between her jaws
and carried him into shelter. One by one after this the first strange
experiences of life came to him, and one by one his instincts received
their birth. Greatest for him of the days to follow was that on which
his inquisitive nose touched the raw flesh of a freshly killed and
bleeding rabbit. It was his first taste of blood. It was sweet. It
filled him with a strange excitement and thereafter he knew what it
meant when Kazan brought in something between his jaws. He soon began
to battle with sticks in place of the soft fur and his teeth grew as
hard and as sharp as little needles.

The Great Mystery was bared to him at last when Kazan brought in between
his jaws, a big rabbit that was still alive but so badly crushed that it
could not run when dropped to the ground. Ba-ree had learned to know
what rabbits and partridges meant--the sweet warm blood that he loved
better even than he had ever loved his mother's milk. But they had come
to him dead. He had never seen one of the monsters alive. And now the
rabbit that Kazan dropped to the ground, kicking and struggling with a
broken back, sent Ba-ree back appalled. For a few moments he wonderingly
watched the dying throes of Kazan's prey. Both Kazan and Gray Wolf
seemed to understand that this was to be Ba-ree's first lesson in his
education as a slay