of
impulse, that it is, as a rule, an easy matter to infer the motives
which are at any one moment impelling them. In my desire to avoid
alike the melodramatic, the visionary, and the sentimental, I have
studied to keep well within the limits of safe inference. Where I may
have seemed to state too confidently the motives underlying the
special action of this or that animal, it will usually be found that
the action itself is very fully presented; and it will, I think, be
further found that the motive which I have here assumed affords the
most reasonable, if not the only reasonable, explanation of that
action.

C. G. D. R.

New York, _April, 1904_.

Contents of the Book

[Illustration]

PAGE

Prefatory Note vii

The Freedom of the Black-faced Ram 3

The Master of Golden Pool 25

The Return to the Trails 45

The Little Wolf of the Pool 65

The Little Wolf of the Air 73

The Alien of the Wild 83

The Silver Frost 111

By the Winter Tide 121

The Rivals of Ringwaak 131

The Decoy 155

The Laugh in the Dark 173

The Kings of the Intervale 185

The Kill 197

The Little People of the Sycamore 211

Horns and Antlers 237

In the Deep of the Grass 247

When the Moon Is over the Corn 257

The Truce 267

The Keeper of the Water-Gate 291

When the Moose Cow Calls 311

The Passing of the Black Whelps 323

The Homeward Trail 351

[Illustration]

The Watchers of the Trails

The Freedom of the Black-faced Ram

On the top of Ringwaak Hill the black-faced ram stood motionless,
looking off with mild, yellow eyes across the wooded level, across the
scattered farmsteads of the settlement, and across the bright,
retreating spirals of the distant river, to that streak of scarlet
light on the horizon which indicated the beginning of sunrise. A few
paces below him, half-hidden by a gray stump, a green juniper bush,
and a mossy brown hillock, lay a white ewe with a lamb at her side.
The ewe's jaws moved leisur