y direction. Still I kept on, holding my course by the wind and
my compass. Then, at the foot of the second barren, my snowshoes
stumbled into great depressions in the snow, and I found myself on the
fresh trail of my caribou again. "If I am lost, I will at least have a
caribou steak, and a skin to wrap me up in," I said, and plunged after
them. As I went, the old Mother Goose rhyme of nursery days came back
and set itself to hunting music:

Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a hunting,
For to catch a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.

Presently I began to sing it aloud. It cheered one up in the storm,
and the lilt of it kept time to the leaping kind of gallop which is
the easiest way to run on snowshoes: "Bye, baby bunting; bye, baby
bunting--Hello!"

A dark mass loomed suddenly up before me on the open barren. The storm
lightened a bit, before setting in heavier; and there were the caribou
just in front of me, standing in a compact mass, the weaker ones in
the middle. They had no thought nor fear of me apparently; they
showed no sign of anger or uneasiness. Indeed, they barely moved aside
as I snowshoed up, in plain sight, without any precaution whatever.
And these were the same animals that had fled upon my approach at
daylight, and that had escaped me all day with marvelous cunning.

As with other deer, the storm is Megaleep's natural protector. When it
comes he thinks that he is safe; that nobody can see him; that the
falling snow will fill his tracks and kill his scent; and that
whatever follows must speedily seek cover for itself. So he gives up
watching, and lies down where he will. So far as his natural enemies
are concerned, he is safe in this; for lynx and wolf and panther, seek
shelter with a falling barometer. They can neither see nor smell; and
they are all afraid. I have often noticed that among all animals and
birds, from the least to the greatest, there is always a truce when
the storms are out.

But the most curious thing I ever stumbled into was a caribou school.
That sounds queer; but it is more common in the wilderness than one
thinks. All gregarious animals have perfectly well defined social
regulations, which the young must learn and respect. To learn them,
they go to school in their own interesting way.

The caribou I am speaking of now are all woodland caribou--larger,
finer animals every way than the barren-ground caribou of the desolate
unwooded regions farther north. In s