seemed suddenly to vanish, spruces and harebells, snow-fields and
drifting white clouds all grouping themselves, like the unnoticed frame
of a picture, around a great gray rock with a huge shaggy she-wolf
keeping watch over it, silent, alert, motionless.

Something stirred in the shadow of the old wolf's watch-tower, tossing
and eddying and growing suddenly quiet, as if the wind were playing
among dead oak leaves. The keen young eyes saw it instantly, dilating
with surprise and excitement. The next instant they had clutched each
other's arms.

"Ooooo!" from Mooka.

"Cubs; keep still!" from Noel.

And shrinking close to the rock under a friendly dwarf spruce they lay
still as two rabbits, watching with round eyes, eager but unafraid, the
antics of three brown wolf cubs that were chasing the flies and tumbling
over some invisible plaything before the door of the den.

Hardly had they made the discovery when the old wolf slipped down from
the rock and stood for an instant over her little ones. Why the play
should stop now, while the breeze was still their comrade and the
sunshine was brighter than ever, or why they should steal away into the
dark den more silently than they had come, none of the cubs could tell.
They felt the order and they obeyed instantly--and that is always the
wonder of watching little wild things at play. The old mother wolf
vanished among the rocks and appeared again higher on the ridge, turning
her head uneasily to try every breeze and rustle and moving shadow. Then
she went questing into the spruce woods, feeling but not understanding