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 or pitfall had entangled her swift feet.  Moreover, she had chosen her den well, where no man had ever stood, and where only the eyes of two children had seen her at a distance.  So the little ones grew and played in the sunshine, and had yet to learn what fear meant.

One day at dusk the mother entered swiftly and, without giving them food as she had always done, seized a cub and disappeared.  For the little one, which had never before ventured beyond sight of the den, it was a long journey indeed that followed,—­miles and miles beside roaring brooks and mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother’s great jaws.  An owl hooted dismally, whoo-hooo! and though he knew the sound well in his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver.  The wind went sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird chirped and whirred away out of their path; the brook roared among the rocks; a big salmon jumped and tumbled back with resounding splash, and jumped again as if the otter were after him.  There was a sudden sharp cry, the first and last voice of a hare when the weasel rises up in front of him; then silence, and the fitful rustle of his mother’s pads moving steadily, swiftly over dry leaves.  And all these sounds of the wilderness night spoke to the little cub of some new thing, of swift feet that follow and of something unknown and terrible that waits for all unwary wild things.  So fear was born.

The long journey ended at last before a dark hole in the hillside; and the smell of his mother, the only familiar thing in his first strange pilgrimage, greeted the cub from the rocks on either side as he passed in out of the starlight.  He was dropped without a sound in a larger den, on some fresh-gathered leaves and dead grass, and lay there all alone, very still, with the new feeling trembling all over him.  A long hour passed; a second cub was laid beside him, and the mother vanished as before; another hour, and the wolf cubs were all together again with the mother feeding them.  Nor did any of them know where they were, nor why they had come, nor the long, long way that led back to where the trail began.