of
man in all the wilderness. They were not hunted. There were no traps
laid for their feet, no poison-baits placed temptingly where they might
pass. In the fens and on the lakes the wildfowl squawked and honked
unfearing to their young, just learning the power of wing; the lynx
played with her kittens without sniffing the air for the menace of man;
the cow moose went openly into the cool water of the lakes with their
calves; the wolverine and the marten ran playfully over the roofs of
deserted shacks and cabins; the beaver and the otter tumbled and
frolicked in their dark pools; the birds sang, and through all the
wilderness there was the drone and song of Nature as some Great Power
must at first have meant that Nature should be. A new generation of
wild things had been born. It was a season of Youth, with tens of
thousands and hundreds of thousands of little children of the wild
playing their first play, learning their first lessons, growing up
swiftly to face the menace and doom of their first winter. And the
Beneficent Spirit of the forests, anticipating what was to come, had
prepared well for them. Everywhere there was plenty. The blueberries,
the blackberries, the mountain-ash and the saskatoons were ripe; tree
and vine were bent low with their burden of fruit. The grass was green
and tender from the summer rains. Bulbous roots were fairly popping out
of the earth; the fens and the edges of the lakes were rich with things
to eat, overhead and underfoot the horn of plenty was emptying itself
without stint.

In this world Neewa and Miki found a vast and unending contentment.
They lay, on this August afternoon, on a sun-bathed shelf of rock that
overlooked a wonderful valley. Neewa, stuffed with luscious
blueberries, was asleep. Miki's eyes were only partly closed as he
looked down into the soft haze of the valley. Up to him came the
rippling music of the stream running between the rocks and over the
pebbly bars below, and with it the soft and languorous drone of the
valley itself. He napped uneasily for half an hour, and then his eyes
opened and he was wide awake. He took a sharp look over the valley.
Then he looked at Neewa, who, fat and lazy, would have slept until
dark. It was always Miki who kept him on the move. And now Miki barked
at him gruffly two or three times, and nipped at one of his ears.

"Wake up!" he might have said. "What's the sense of sleeping on a day
like this? Let's go down along the creek a