oozak looked
up, and saw the shadow of Upisk, the great eagle, as it flung itself
between the sun and the earth. Neewa saw the shadow, and cringed nearer
to his mother.

And Noozak--so old that she had lost half her teeth, so old that her
bones ached on damp and chilly nights, and her eyesight was growing
dim--was still not so old that she did not look down with growing
exultation upon what she saw. Her mind was travelling beyond the mere
valley in which they had wakened. Off there beyond the walls of forest,
beyond the farthest lake, beyond the river and the plain, were the
illimitable spaces which gave her home. To her came dully a sound
uncaught by Neewa--the almost unintelligible rumble of the great
waterfall. It was this, and the murmur of a thousand trickles of
running water, and the soft wind breathing down in the balsam and
spruce that put the music of spring into the air.

At last Noozak heaved a great breath out of her lungs and with a grunt
to Neewa began to lead the way slowly down among the rocks to the foot
of the ridge.

In the golden pool of the valley it was even warmer than on the crest
of the ridge. Noozak went straight to the edge of the slough. Half a
dozen rice birds rose with a whir of wings that made Neewa almost upset
himself. Noozak paid no attention to them. A loon let out a squawky
protest at Noozak's soft-footed appearance, and followed it up with a
raucous screech that raised the hair on Neewa's spine. And Noozak paid
no attention to this. Neewa observed these things. His eye was on her,
and instinct had already winged his legs with the readiness to run if
his mother should give the signal. In his funny little head it was
developing very quickly that his mother was a most wonderful creature.
She was by all odds the biggest thing alive--that is, the biggest that
stood on legs, and moved. He was confident of this for a space of
perhaps two minutes, when they came to the end of the fen. And here was
a sudden snort, a crashing of bracken, the floundering of a huge body
through knee-deep mud, and a monstrous bull moose, four times as big as
Noozak, set off in lively flight. Neewa's eyes all but popped from his
head. And STILL Noozak PAID NO ATTENTION!

It was then that Neewa crinkled up his tiny nose and snarled, just as
he had snarled at Noozak's ears and hair and at sticks he had worried
in the black cavern. A glorious understanding dawned upon him. He could
snarl at anything he wanted to