news
changed the whole color and current of our lives. Hitherto we had gone
without fear where we would, careless of anything but our own
inclinations. Now a sudden terror had arisen, that threw a shadow over
every minute of the day and night. Man was near--man, who seemed love to
kill, and who _could_ kill; not by his strength, but by virtue of some
cunning which we could neither combat nor understand. Thereafter, though
perhaps man's name might not be mentioned between us from one day to
another, I do not think there was a minute when we were not all more or
less on the alert, with ears and nostrils open for an indication of his
dreaded presence.

Though Cinnamon thought we could safely stay where we were, he proposed
himself to push on, farther away from the neighborhood of the hated
human beings. In any emergency he was sadly crippled by his broken leg,
and--at least till that was healed--he preferred to be as remote from
danger as possible.

After he was gone my father and mother held council. There was no more
sleep for us that day, and in the evening, when we started out on our
regular search for food, it was very cautiously, and with nerves all on
the jump. It was a trying night. We went warily, with our heads ever
turned up-wind, hardly daring to dig for a root lest the sound of our
digging should fill our ears so that we would not hear man's approach;
and when I stripped a bit of bark from a fallen log to look for beetles
underneath, and it crackled noisily as it came away, my father growled
angrily at me and mother cuffed me from behind.

I remember, though, that they shared the beetles between them.

I need not dwell on the days of anxiety that followed. I do not remember
them much myself, except that they were very long and nerve-racking. I
will tell you at once how it was that we first actually came in contact
with man himself.

In the course of my life I have reached the conclusion that nearly all
the troubles that come to animals are the result of one of two
things--either of their greediness or their curiosity. It was curiosity
which led me into the difficulty with Porcupine. It was Cinnamon's
greediness that got his leg broken for him. Our first coming in contact
with man was the result, I am afraid, of both--but chiefly of our
curiosity.

During the days that followed our meeting with Cinnamon, while we were
moving about so cautiously, we were also all the time (and, though we
never mentioned