hen the
last quill was out.

Meanwhile, Kagh continued on his placid way toward the black forest
wall, just beyond the rail fence. He had fed well and had quickly routed
his enemy. Altogether he considered the world a happy place for
porcupines. In the darkness which precedes the dawn he took his way to a
slender poplar sapling standing near the border of the woods. This he
climbed as far as his weight would permit and, seated comfortably on one
branch, with his hand-like paws tightly clasping another, he went
peacefully to sleep, lulled by every passing breeze.

THE TRAIL OF THE MOOSE

On a bare, rocky promontory far up in the north country, where the
turbulent waters of the Little Vermilion cut through lanes of pointed
fir and dark spruce, a gigantic moose stood, his ungainly body and huge
antlers silhouetted against the sky of sunset. Below him the noisy,
hurrying waters were churned into foam over innumerable hidden rocks; to
the rear lay the wilderness, green, shadowy and mysterious.

The moose was a magnificent beast, the ridge of his shoulders rising to
a height of little less than seven feet. His great antlers, the
admiration and desire of every hunter in the Little Vermilion country,
showed a spread of almost six feet from tip to tip. As if carved from
the rock the big moose stood, his eyes on the distant waters, only his
ears moving slightly to test the wind. Then, as some vagrant whiff from
the gently moving air assailed the sensitive nostrils, or some faint
sound reached his ears, the great beast turned and vanished into the
forest, as light and soundless as thistledown for all his twelve
hundred pounds of bulk. Not even a twig snapped under his feet.

[Illustration: As if carved from the rock the big moose stood.]

As night shrouded the dim trails, the moose turned southward through the
darkness. In spite of the dense wilderness he advanced rapidly, his huge
antlers laid along his back that they might impede his progress as
little as possible, his nose thrust upward, sifting the wind. In about
an hour he came out upon the shore of a lonely pond among the hills. A
faint breeze ruffled the mirror-like surface upon which the delicate
white cups of water-lilies seemed to hold a light of their own among the
dark green pads.

With a sigh of satisfaction the moose waded in and plunged his muzzle
into the clear water, breaking the star reflections into innumerable
points of light as the ripples wide