nes and spruce thickets, to another den where no human eye
ever looked upon their play.

"Shall we see them again, little brother?" said Mooka wistfully, when
they had climbed to their watch-tower for the third time and seen
nothing. And Noel made confident answer:

"Oh, yes, we see um again, lil sister. Wayeeses got um wandering foot;
go 'way off long ways; bimeby come back on same trail. He jus' like
Injun, like um old camp best. Oh, yes, sartin we see um again." But
Noel's eyes looked far away as he spoke, and in his heart he was
thinking of his bow and his long arrow with the sharp point, and of a
moonlit night with white shapes flitting noiselessly over the snow and
scratching at the door of the little cabin.

_The Way of The Wolf_

A new experience had come to the little wolf cubs in a single
night,--the experience of fear. For weeks they had lain hid in the dark
den, or played fearlessly in the bright sunshine, guarded and kept at
every moment, day or night, by the gaunt old mother wolf that was their
only law, their only companion. At times they lay for hours hungry and
restless, longing to go out into the bright world, yet obeying a
stronger will than their own, even at a distance. For, once a wild
mother in her own dumb way has bidden her little ones lie still, they
rarely stir from the spot, refusing even to be dragged away from the
nest or den, knowing well the punishment in store if she return and find
them absent. Moreover, it is useless to dissimulate, to go out and play
and then to be sleeping innocently with the cubs when the old wolf's
shadow darkens the entrance. No concealment is possible from wolf's
nose; before she enters the den the mother knows perfectly all that has
happened since she went away. So the days glided by peacefully between
sleep and play, the cubs trusting absolutely in the strength and
tenderness that watched over them, the mother building the cubs' future
on the foundation of the two instincts which are strong in every wild
creature born into a world of danger,--the instinct to lie still and let
nature's coloring hide all defenseless little ones, and the instinct to
obey instantly a stronger will than their own.

There was no fear as yet, only instinctive wariness; for fear comes
largely from others' example, from alarms and excitement and cries of
danger, which only the grown animals understand. The old wolf had been
undisturbed; no dog or hunter had chased her; no trap