his size and the dignity of increased age, he
began frisking about Neewa In a manner emphatically expressive of his
joy at his comrade's awakening.

"It's been a deuce of a lonely winter, Neewa, and I'm tickled to death
to see you on your feet again," his antics said. "What'll we do? Go for
a hunt?"

This seemed to be the thought in Neewa's mind, for he headed straight
up the valley until they came to an open fen where he proceeded to
quest about for a dinner of roots and grass; and as he searched he
grunted--grunted in his old, companionable, cubbish way. And Miki,
hunting with him, found that once more the loneliness had gone out of
his world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

To Miki and Neewa, especially Neewa, there seemed nothing extraordinary
in the fact that they were together again, and that their comradeship
was resumed. Although during his months of hibernation Neewa's body had
grown, his mind had not changed its memories or its pictures. It had
not passed through a mess of stirring events such as had made the
winter a thrilling one for Miki, and so it was Neewa who accepted the
new situation most casually. He went on feeding as if nothing at all
unusual had happened during the past four months, and after the edge
had gone from his first hunger he fell into his old habit of looking to
Miki for leadership. And Miki fell into the old ways as though only a
day or a week and not four months had lapsed in their brotherhood. It
is possible that he tried mightily to tell Neewa what had happened. At
least he must have had that desire--to let him know in what a strange
way he had found his old master, Challoner, and how he had lost him
again. And also how he found the woman, Nanette, and the little baby
Nanette, and how for a long time he had lived with them and loved them
as he had never loved anything else on earth.

It was the old cabin, far to the north and east, that drew him now--the
cabin in which Nanette and the baby had lived; and it was toward this
cabin that he lured Neewa during the first two weeks of their hunting.
They did not travel quickly, largely because of Neewa's voracious
spring appetite and the fact that it consumed nine tenths of his waking
hours to keep full on such provender as roots and swelling buds and
grass. During the first week Miki grew either hopeless or disgusted in
his hunting. One day he killed five rabbits and Neewa ate four of them
and grunted piggishly for more.

If Miki had