om the shelter of his mother's presence; so, with a
snort of apprehension, he submitted to being stroked and rubbed about
the ears and neck and throat. The sensation was curiously comforting,
and suddenly his fear vanished. With his long, mobile muzzle he began
to tug appealingly at a convenient fold of the man's woollen sleeve.
Smiling complacently at this sign of confidence, the man left him, and
started the team at a slow walk up the trail. With a hoarse bleat of
alarm, thinking he was about to be deserted, the calf followed after
the sled, his long legs wobbling awkwardly.

From the first moment that she set eyes upon him, shambling awkwardly
into the yard at her husband's heels, Jabe Smith's wife was
inhospitable toward the ungainly youngling of the wild. She
declared that he would take all the milk. And he did. For the next
two months she was unable to make any butter, and her opinions on
the subject were expressed without reserve. But Jabe was inflexible,
in his taciturn, backwoods way, and the calf, till he was old enough
to pasture, got all the milk he wanted. He grew and throve so
astonishingly that Jabe began to wonder if there was not some
mistake in the scheme of things, making cows' milk the proper
nutriment for moose calves. By autumn the youngster was so big and
sleek that he might almost have passed for a yearling.

Jabe Smith, lumberman, pioneer and guide, loved all animals, even
those which in the fierce joy of the hunt he loved to kill. The young
moose bull, however, was his peculiar favourite--partly, perhaps,
because of Mrs. Smith's relentless hostility to it. And the ungainly
youngster repaid his love with a devotion that promised to become
embarrassing. All around the farm he was for ever at his heels, like a
dog; and if, by any chance, he became separated from his idol, he
would make for him in a straight line, regardless of currant bushes,
bean rows, cabbage patches or clothes-lines. This strenuous directness
did not further endear him to Mrs. Smith. That good lady used to lie
awake at night, angrily devising schemes for getting rid of the "ugly
brute." These schemes of vengeance were such a safety-valve to her
injured feelings that she would at last make up her mind to content
herself with "takin' it out on the hide o' the critter" next day, with
a sound hickory stick. When next day came, however, and she went out
to milk, the youngster would shamble up to greet her with such amiable
trust i