and the water, and the night that was there; but
nothing could he see, and nothing more he heard except at last, far
away, one last, long, lonely, ghastlily lonesome howl--the howl of
defeat.

Then it seemed--but truly it may only have been a trick of the
moonlight as he snarled, revealing his white fangs under his
wickedly-curled-back lip--it seemed, I say, that the White Wolf of the
Frozen Waste grinned. And good reason had he to grin, for the life of
the white wolf had been nothing more nor less than one long, bad, bold,
blustering, bullying _bluff_! What's that? Yes, sirs--bluff! And in
this wise.

Firstly, his extraordinarily long legs gave him a height out of all
proportion to his real hulk; secondly, his abnormally long and woolly
coat gave him an apparent bulk which was out of all proportion to fact;
thirdly, his actual bulk was really scarcely larger than that of any
very large wolf; and, fourthly--but this concerned him only now--he was
really quite an old wolf; one long past his prime, one quite unable to
face any really full-grown fine young wolf, one retaining only his
matchless speed by reason of his abnormally long legs, and his
leadership by terrific and cleverly acted ferocity on the strength of
his apparent giant dimensions. That was all, but it was enough; wasn't
it, boys? Would you care to have changed places with the old rascal,
and played that bluff out against _those_ odds, in _that_ company, for
years as he had done? I _don't_ think. No, nor I, either. It was
some gamble, that. What?

At last the White Wolf of the Frozen Waste turned, with an insolent
flourish of his brush, and trotted up the bank on the heels of the
she-wolf, who had come to life again and preceded him into the dense
tangle of the woods, which swallowed him up, him and his darned bluff,
utterly.

XV

FATE AND THE FEARFUL

We are the little folks--we!
Too little to love or to hate.--RUDYABD KIPLING.

No one ever accused him of not being all there. The job was to see
what was there.

A tiny alderman of the red bank-vole people, whose tunnels marched with
the road through the wood, taking the afternoon sun--a slanting copper
net, it was--at his own front-door under the root of the Scots fir, was
aware of a flicker at a hole's mouth. He looked again, and saw the
mouth of that hole was empty. He blinked his star-bright eyes in his
fat, furry, little square head, after the manner of one who thought