largely on a polar bear.  So there was no fear at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed up the brook next day to watch at the wolf’s den.  And even when Noel found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog’s, in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.

Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side they watched the play of the young wolf cubs.  Every day they grew more interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters.  Once they brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear, like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.  Mooka claimed that wolf instantly for her own, as if they were watching the husky puppies, and by his broken ear said she should know him again when he grew to be a big wolf, if he should ever follow her, as his father perhaps had followed Old Tomah; but Noel, thinking of his bow and his long arrow with the sharp point, thought of the winter night long ago and hoped that his two wolves would know enough to keep away when the pack came again, for he did not see any way to recognize and spare them, especially in the moonlight.  So they lay there making plans and dreaming dreams, gentle or savage, for the little cubs that played with the feathers and grasshoppers and cloud shadows, all unconscious that any eyes but their mother’s saw or cared for their wild, free playing.

[Illustration:  “Watching her growing youngsters”]

Something bothered the old she-wolf in these days of watching.  The den was still secure, for no human foot had crossed the deep ravine or ventured nearer than the opposite hilltop.  Her nose told her that unmistakably; but still she was uneasy, and whenever the cubs were playing she felt, without knowing why, that she was being watched.  When she trailed over all the ridges in the twilight, seeking to know if enemies had been near, she found always the scent of two human beings on a flat rock under the dwarf spruces; and there were always the two trails coming up and going down the brook.  She followed once close behind the two children, seeing them plainly all the way, till they came in sight of the little cabin under the cliff, and from the door her enemy man came out to meet them.  For these two little ones, whose trail she knew, the old she-wolf, like