the door of her den she could look down on the old Indian's cabin, like
a pebble on the shore, so steep were the billowing hills and so
impassable the ravines that no human foot ever trod the place, not even
in autumn when the fishermen left their boats at anchor in Harbor Weal
and camped inland on the paths of the big caribou herds.

Whether or not the father wolf ever knew where his cubs were hidden only
he himself could tell. He was an enormous brute, powerful and cunning
beyond measure, that haunted the lonely thickets and ponds bordering the
great caribou barrens over the ridge, and that kept a silent watch,
within howling distance, over the den which he never saw. Sometimes the
mother wolf met him on her wanderings and they hunted together. Often he
brought the game he had caught, a fox or a young goose; and sometimes
when she had hunted in vain he met her, as if he had understood her need
from a distance, and led her to where he had buried two or three of the
rabbits that swarmed in the thickets. But spite of the attention and the
indifferent watch which he kept, he never ventured near the den, which
he could have found easily enough by following the mother's track. The
old she-wolf would have flown at his throat like a fury had he showed
his head over the top of the ridge.

The reason for this was simple enough to the savage old mother, though
there are some things about it that men do not yet understand. Wolves,
like cats and foxes, and indeed like most wild male animals, have an
atrocious way of killing their own young when they find them
unprotected; so the mother animal searches out a den by herself and
rarely allows the male to come near it. Spite of this beastly habit it
must be said honestly of the old he-wolf that he shows a marvelous
gentleness towards his mate. He runs at the slightest show of teeth from
a mother wolf half his size, and will stand meekly a snap of the jaws or