ound, pushed hard with his antlers, and began to force
Antler-Crown back.

Grayskin fought quietly, while Antler-Crown puffed and snorted. The old
elk, in his turn, was now being forced backward over the meadow.
Suddenly a loud crash was heard! A taglet in the old elk's antlers had
snapped. He tore himself loose, and dashed into the forest.

Karr was still standing at the forest border when Grayskin came along.

"Now that you have seen what there is in the forest," said Karr, "will
you come home with me?"

"Yes, it's about time," observed the elk.

Both were silent on the way home. Karr sighed several times, as if he
was disappointed about something; but Grayskin stepped along--his head
in the air--and seemed delighted over the adventure. He walked ahead
unhesitatingly until they came to the enclosure. There he paused. He
looked in at the narrow pen where he had lived up till now; saw the
beaten ground, the stale fodder, the little trough where he had drunk
water, and the dark shed in which he had slept.

"The elk are one with the forest!" he cried. Then he threw back his
head, so that his neck rested against his back, and rushed wildly into
the woods.

HELPLESS, THE WATER-SNAKE

In a pine thicket in the heart of Liberty Forest, every year, in the
month of August, there appeared a few grayish-white moths of the kind
which are called nun moths. They were small and few in number, and
scarcely any one noticed them. When they had fluttered about in the
depth of the forest a couple of nights, they laid a few thousand eggs on
the branches of trees; and shortly afterward dropped lifeless to the
ground.

When spring came, little prickly caterpillars crawled out from the eggs
and began to eat the pine needles. They had good appetites, but they
never seemed to do the trees any serious harm, because they were hotly
pursued by birds. It was seldom that more than a few hundred
caterpillars escaped the pursuers.

The poor things that lived to be full grown crawled up on the branches,
spun white webs around themselves, and sat for a couple of weeks as
motionless pupae. During this period, as a rule, more than half of them
were abducted. If a hundred nun moths came forth in August, winged and
perfect, it was reckoned a good year for them.

This sort of uncertain and obscure existence did the moths lead for many
years in Liberty Forest. There were no insect folk in the whole country
that were so scarce, and they would have