most mother animals in the presence of children, felt no fear nor enmity whatever.  But they watched her den and her own little ones, that was sure enough; and why should any one watch a den except to enter some time and destroy?  That is a question which no mother wolf could ever answer; for the wild animals, unlike dogs and blue jays and men, mind strictly their own business and pay no attention to other animals.  They hate also to be watched; for the thought of watching always suggests to their minds that which follows,—­the hunt, the rush, the wild break-away, and the run for life.  Had she not herself watched a hundred times at the rabbit’s form, the fox’s runway, the deer path, the wild-goose nest?  What could she expect for her own little ones, therefore, when the man cubs, beings of larger reach and unknown power, came daily to watch at her den?

All this unanswered puzzle must have passed through the old wolf’s head as she trotted up the brook away from the Indian cabin in the twilight.  When in doubt trust your fears,—­that is wolf wisdom in a nutshell; and that marks the difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance, which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity.  So the old wolf took counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over rocks and ravines 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