But it was not to sleep.  He was ready and anxious to go on.  He wanted to explore still further the mysterious and fascinating depths of the forest.  He no longer felt the strange fear that had been upon him before he killed the rabbit.  In two minutes under the brush-heap Nature had performed one of her miracles of education.  In those two minutes Miki had risen out of whimpering puppyhood to new power and understanding.  He had passed that elemental stage which his companionship with Challoner had prolonged.  He had killed, and the hot thrill of it set fire to every instinct that was in him.  In the half hour during which he lay flat on his belly, his head alert and listening, while Neewa slept, he passed half way from puppyhood to dogdom.  He would never know that Hela, his Mackenzie hound father, was the mightiest hunter in all the reaches of the Little Fox country, and that alone he had torn down a bull caribou.  But he felt it.  There was something insistent and demanding in the call.  And because he was answering that call, and listening eagerly to the whispering voices of the forest, his quick ears caught the low, chuckling monotone of Kawook, the porcupine.

Miki lay very still.  A moment later he heard the soft clicking of quills, and then Kawook came out in the open and stood up on his hind feet in a patch of sunlight.

For thirteen years Kawook had lived undisturbed in this particular part of the wilderness, and in his old age he weighed thirty pounds if he weighed an ounce.  On this afternoon, coming for his late dinner, he was feeling even more than usually happy.  His eyesight at best was dim.  Nature had never intended him to see very far, and had therefore quilted him heavily with the barbed shafts of his protecting armour.  Thirty feet away he was entirely oblivious of Miki, at least apparently so; and Miki hugged the ground closer, warned by the swiftly developing instinct within him that here was a creature it would be unwise to attack.

For perhaps a minute Kawook stood up, chuckling his tribal song without any visible movement of his body.  He stood profile to Miki, like a fat alderman.  He was so fat that his stomach bulged out in front like the half of a balloon, and over this stomach his hands were folded in a peculiarly human way, so that he looked more like an old she-porcupine than a master in his tribe.

It was not until then that Miki observed Iskwasis, the young female porcupine, who had poked herself slyly out from under a bush near Kawook.  In spite of his years the red thrill of romance was not yet gone from the old fellow’s bones, and he immediately started to give an exhibition of his good breeding and elegance.  He began with his ludicrous love-making dance, hopping from one foot to the other until his fat stomach shook, and chuckling louder than ever.  The charms of Iskwasis were indeed sufficient to turn the head of an older beau than Kawook.  She was