a den except to enter some time and destroy? That is a question which no
mother wolf could ever answer; for the wild animals, unlike dogs and
blue jays and men, mind strictly their own business and pay no attention
to other animals. They hate also to be watched; for the thought of
watching always suggests to their minds that which follows,--the hunt,
the rush, the wild break-away, and the run for life. Had she not herself
watched a hundred times at the rabbit's form, the fox's runway, the deer
path, the wild-goose nest? What could she expect for her own little
ones, therefore, when the man cubs, beings of larger reach and unknown
power, came daily to watch at her den?

All this unanswered puzzle must have passed through the old wolf's head
as she trotted up the brook away from the Indian cabin in the twilight.
When in doubt trust your fears,--that is wolf wisdom in a nutshell; and
that marks the difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance,
which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity. So the old wolf took
counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them
one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over
rocks and ravines and spruce thickets, to another den where no human eye
ever looked upon their play.

"Shall we see them again, little brother?" said Mooka wistfully, when
they had climbed to their watch-tower for the third time and seen
nothing. And Noel made confident answer:

"Oh, yes, we see um again, lil sister. Wayeeses got um wandering foot;
go 'way off long ways; bimeby come back on same trail. He jus' like
Injun, like um old camp best. Oh, yes, sartin we see um again." But
Noel's eyes looked far away as he spoke, and in his heart he was
thinking of his bow and his long arrow with the sharp point, and of a