g with a kind of sympathy how hungry all these shy
prowlers must be to leave their own haunts, whence the rabbits and seals
had vanished, and venture boldly into the yards of men. As for Noel, he
remembered with regret that he was too small at the time to use the long
bow which he now carried on his rabbit and goose hunts; and as he took
it from the wall, thrumming its chord of caribou sinew and fingering the
sharp edge of a long arrow, he was hoping for just such another winter,
longing to try his skill and strength on some of these midnight
prowlers--a lynx, perhaps, not to begin too largely on a polar bear. So
there was no fear at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed
up the brook next day to watch at the wolf's den. And even when Noel
found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog's,
in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently
following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed
Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.

Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under
the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side
they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more
interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding
the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in
wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also
something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down
gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters. Once they
brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and
through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was
larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear,
like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.
Mooka claimed that wolf instantly for her own, as if they were watching
the husky puppies, and by his broken ear said she should know him again
when he grew to be a big wolf, if he should ever follow her, as his
father perhaps had followed Old Tomah; but Noel, thinking of his bow and
his long arrow with the sharp point, thought of the winter night long
ago and hoped that his two wolves would know enough to keep away when
the pack came again, for he did not see any way to recognize and spare
them, especially in the moonlight. So they lay there making plans and
dreaming dreams, gentle or savage, for th