two minutes under the brush-heap Nature
had performed one of her miracles of education. In those two minutes
Miki had risen out of whimpering puppyhood to new power and
understanding. He had passed that elemental stage which his
companionship with Challoner had prolonged. He had KILLED, and the hot
thrill of it set fire to every instinct that was in him. In the half
hour during which he lay flat on his belly, his head alert and
listening, while Neewa slept, he passed half way from puppyhood to
dogdom. He would never know that Hela, his Mackenzie hound father, was
the mightiest hunter in all the reaches of the Little Fox country, and
that alone he had torn down a bull caribou. But he FELT it. There was
something insistent and demanding in the call. And because he was
answering that call, and listening eagerly to the whispering voices of
the forest, his quick ears caught the low, chuckling monotone of
Kawook, the porcupine.

Miki lay very still. A moment later he heard the soft clicking of
quills, and then Kawook came out in the open and stood up on his hind
feet in a patch of sunlight.

For thirteen years Kawook had lived undisturbed in this particular part
of the wilderness, and in his old age he weighed thirty pounds if he
weighed an ounce. On this afternoon, coming for his late dinner, he was
feeling even more than usually happy. His eyesight at best was dim.
Nature had never intended him to see very far, and had therefore
quilted him heavily with the barbed shafts of his protecting armour.
Thirty feet away he was entirely oblivious of Miki, at least apparently
so; and Miki hugged the ground closer, warned by the swiftly developing
instinct within him that here was a creature it would be unwise to
attack.

For perhaps a minute Kawook stood up, chuckling his tribal song without
any visible movement of his body. He stood profile to Miki, like a fat
alderman. He was so fat that his stomach bulged out in front like the
half of a balloon, and over this stomach his hands were folded in a
peculiarly human way, so that he looked more like an old she-porcupine
than a master in his tribe.

It was not until then that Miki observed Iskwasis, the young female
porcupine, who had poked herself slyly out from under a bush near
Kawook. In spite of his years the red thrill of romance was not yet
gone from the old fellow's bones, and he immediately started to give an
exhibition of his good breeding and elegance. He began with his