, that this bright world is a famous place, just made
a-purpose for little ones to play in. Sitting on their tails in a solemn
row the wolf cubs bent their heads and pointed their noses gravely at
the sea. There it was, all silver and blue and boundless, with tiny
white sails dancing over it, winking and flashing like entangled bits of
sunshine; and since the eyes of a cub, like those of a little child,
cannot judge distances, one stretched a paw at the nearest sail, miles
away, to turn it over and make it go the other way. They turned up their
heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite,
with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one
stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to
pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near
them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday,
and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took
to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over each
other, while the gaunt old mother wolf looked down from her rock and
watched and was satisfied.

_Noel and Mooka_

Down on the shore, that same bright June afternoon, little Noel and his
sister Mooka were going on wonderful sledge journeys, meeting wolves and
polar bears and caribou and all sorts of adventures, more wonderful by
far than any that ever came to imagination astride of a rocking-horse.
They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the
rest,--five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a
tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a
bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand,
waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside,
cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar! Hiya, Wolf! Hi, hiya,
hiya, yeeee!"--and then shrieking with laughter as the sledge overturned
and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness,
just like the husky dogs in winter. Mooka was trying to untangle them,
dancing about to keep her bare toes and fingers away from the nipping
claws, when she jumped up with a yell, the biggest crab hanging to the
end of her finger.

"Owee! oweeeee! Caesar bit me," she wailed. Then she stopped, with
finger in her mouth, while Caesar scrambled headlong into the tide; for
Noel was standing on the beach pointing at a brown sail far down in the
deep