with a strange and unsatisfied yearning, and as Muskwa napped in his
little bed among the bushes Thor's ears were keenly alert for certain
sounds and his nose frequently sniffed the air. He wanted a mate. It was
_puskoowepesim_--the "moulting moon"--and always in this moon, or the end
of the "egg-laying moon," which was June, he hunted for the female that
came to him from the western ranges. He was almost entirely a creature of
habit, and always he made this particular detour, entering the other valley
again far down toward the Babine. He never failed to feed on fish along the
way, and the more fish he ate the stronger was the odour of him. It is
barely possible Thor had discovered that this perfume of golden-spotted
trout made him more attractive to his lady-love. Anyway, he ate fish, and
he smelled abundantly.

Thor rose and stretched himself two hours before sunset, and he knocked
three more fish out of the water. Muskwa ate the head of one and Thor
finished the rest. Then they continued their pilgrimage.

It was a new world that Muskwa entered now. In it there were none of the
old familiar sounds. The purring drone of the upper valley was gone. There
were no whistlers, and no ptarmigan, and no fat little gophers running
about. The water of the lake lay still, and dark, and deep, with black and
sunless pools hiding themselves under the roots of trees, so close did the
forest cling to it. There were no rocks to climb over, but dank, soft logs,
thick windfalls, and litters of brush. The air was different, too. It was
very still. Under their feet at times was a wonderful carpet of soft moss
in which Thor sank nearly to his armpits. And the forest was filled with a
strange gloom and many mysterious shadows, and there hung heavily in it the
pungent smells of decaying vegetation.

Thor did not travel so swiftly here. The silence and the gloom and the
oppressively scented air seemed to rouse his caution. He stepped quietly;
frequently he stopped and looked about him, and listened; he smelled at the
edges of pools hidden under the roots; every new sound brought him to a
stop, his head hung low and his ears alert.

Several times Muskwa saw shadowy things floating through the gloom. They
were the big gray owls that turned snow white in winter. And once, when it
was almost dark, they came upon a pop-eyed, loose-jointed, fierce-looking
creature in the trail who scurried away like a ball at sight of Thor. It
was a lynx.

It w