Uncle Andy’s way of putting it was somehow so vivid that the Child trembled too at that.

“After a while,” continued Uncle Andy, “when she saw that her mother made no sign of rising and coming to her, she came staggering down from her place under the bush, her long, awkward legs very difficult to manage.  Reaching her mother’s side, she poked her coaxingly with her wet little muzzle.  Meeting no response, she poked her impatiently, and even butted her.  When even this brought no response, a sudden overwhelming terror chilled her heart, and her weak knees almost gave way.  She had an impulse to run from this thing that looked like her mother and smelled like her mother, and yet was evidently, after all, not her mother.  She was afraid to stay there.  But she was also afraid to go away.  And then she just began to bawl again at the top of her voice, for she was not only frightened and lonely, but also hungry.

“Of course, everything in the woods for half a mile around heard her bawling.”

And just here Uncle Andy had the heartlessness to pause and relight his pipe.

“And then—­another bear came!” broke in the Child breathlessly.

“No, not exactly,” responded Uncle Andy at last.  “Of course, lots of things came to see what all that queer noise was about—­stealthy things, creeping up silently and peering with round bright eyes from thickets and weed tufts.  But the calf did not see or notice any of these.  All she saw was a tall, dark, ungainly looking, long-legged creature, half as tall again as her mother had been, with no horns, a long clumsy head, thick overhanging nose, and big splay hooves.  She didn’t quite know whether to be frightened at this great, dark form or not.  But she stopped her noise, I can tell you.

“Well, the tall stranger stood still, about thirty or forty paces away, eyeing the calf with interest and the fawn-colored heap on the ground with suspicion.  Then, all at once, the calf forgot her fears.  She was so lonely, you know, and the stranger did not look at all like a bear.  So, with a little appealing Bah, she ran forward clumsily, straight up to the tall stranger’s side, paused a moment at the alien smell, and then, with a cool impudence only possible at the age of twenty-five hours, began to help herself to a dinner of fresh milk.  The tall stranger turned her great dark head far around, sniffed doubtfully for a few seconds, and fell to licking the presumptuous one’s back assiduously.”

“I know,” said the Child proudly.  “It was a moose.”

“I’d have been ashamed of you,” said Uncle Andy, “if you hadn’t known that at once from my description.  Of course, it was a cow moose.  But where the calf’s great piece of luck came in was in the fact that the moose had lost her calf, just the day before, through its falling into the river and being swept away by the rapids.  Her heart, heavy with grief and loneliness, her udder aching with the pressure of its milk, she had been drawn up to see what manner of baby it was that dared to cry its misery so openly here in the dangerous forest.