ut into the thicket he dared not
swoop lest he should be caught at a disadvantage there. For a long time
he circled, hoping that his enemy would come out and give him another
opportunity of vengeance. Then, seeing that the bear lay motionless,
apparently asleep, his rage wore itself out. Higher he whirled, and yet
higher, while the wary beast in the thicket watched patiently for his
going. Then suddenly he changed his course. With long, splendid sweep of
wing he made off in direct flight, slanting swiftly upward toward the
blue silence above the peak.

On the Night Trail

The radiant, blue-white, midwinter moonlight, flooding the little open
space of white in the blackness of the spruce forest, revealed the
frozen fragments of a big lake trout scattered over the snow. They stood
out sharply, so that no midnight forager of the wilds, prowling in the
fringes of the shadow and peering forth in the watch for prey or foe,
could by any possibility fail to sight them.

The stillness of the solitude was intense, breathless, as if sealed to
perpetual silence by the bitter cold. At last, at one corner of the
open, a spruce branch that leaned upon the snow stirred ever so
slightly; and from its shelter a little gray-brown nose, surmounted by a
pair of tiny eyes like black beads, anxiously surveyed the perilous
space of illumination. For perhaps half a minute there was not another
movement. Then the shrew-mouse, well aware that death might be watching
him from under every tree, plucked up a desperate valour and darted
out into the light. The goad of his winter hunger driving him, he seized
the nearest bit of fish that was small enough for him to handle, and
scurried back with it to his safe hole under a fir-root. It was brave
adventure, and deserved its success.

[Illustration: "THE SHREW-MOUSE ... DARTED OUT INTO THE LIGHT."]

For ten minutes more nothing happened to break the stillness. Then again
the little shrew-mouse peered from the covert of his hanging branch.
This time, however, he drew back instantly. He had caught sight of a
pointed black head and snake-like neck stealthily reconnoitring from the
opposite side of the open. A hungry mink was making ready to appropriate
some of the fish; but since he knew that a forest glade, far from the
water, was not a customary resort of fish, alive or frozen, he was
inclined to be suspicious of some kind of trap or ambuscade. Instead of
looking at the delicious morsels, th