and stopped his rush when about halfway down the bank.  Caution began to cool his vengeful humor.  After all, it seemed there was really no luck for him in a fawn-colored calf.  He’d try a red one or a black-and-white one next time.  As he came to this conclusion, the indignant moose came to shore.  Whereupon, he wheeled with a grunt and made off, just a little faster, perhaps, than was quite consistent with his dignity, into the darkness of the fir thickets.  The moose, with the coarse hair standing up stiffly along her neck, shook herself and stood glaring after him.

“Through the summer and autumn the calf found it altogether delightful being a moose.  As the cold began to bite her hair began to thicken up a protection against it; but, nevertheless, with her thin, delicate skin she felt it painfully.  After the first heavy snowfall she had a lot of trouble to get food, having to paw down through the snow for every mouthful of withered grass.  When the snow got to be three or four feet deep, and her foster mother, along with a wide-antlered bull, three other cows, and a couple of youngsters had trodden out a ’moose yard’ with its maze of winding alleys, her plight grew sore.  All along the bottom edges of these alleys she nibbled the dead grass and dry herbage, and she tried to browse, like her companions, on the twigs of poplar and birch.  But the insufficient, unnatural food and the sharp cold hit her hard.  She would huddle up beneath her mother’s belly or crowd down among the rest of the herd for warmth, but long before Christmas she had become a mere bag of bones.”

The Child shivered sympathetically.  But, remembering the Snowhouse Baby, he could not help inquiring: 

“Why didn’t she make herself a house in the snow?”

“Didn’t know enough!” answered Uncle Andy shortly.  “Did you ever hear of any of the cow kind having sense enough for that?  Well, it’s a pretty sure thing, you may take it, that she would never have pulled through the winter if something unexpected hadn’t happened to change her luck.

“It was the farmer—­the one who had owned her mother, and who, of course, really owned her, too.

“With his hired man and a team of two powerful backwoods horses and a big sled for axes and food, he had come back into the woods to cut the heavy spruce timber which grew around the lake.  A half-mile back from the lake, on the opposite shore, he had his snug log camp and his warm little barn full of hay.  He and his man had everything they needed for their comfort except fresh meat.  And when they came upon the winding paths of the ‘moose yard’ they knew they were not going to lack meat for long.

“On the following day, on snowshoes, the two men explored the ‘yard,’ tramping along beside the deep-trodden trails.  Soon they came upon the herd, and marked the lofty antlers of the bull towering over a bunch of low fir bushes.  The farmer raised his heavy rifle.  It was an easy shot.  He fired, and the antlered head went down.