STEPPING-STONES 25 



made a mistake never made a discovery, and she 

 very soon found, as do all exploring minds, that 

 there is no mistake so great as the mistake of not 

 going on. 



She chose the caribou as leader. It appeared so 

 confident as it crossed the snow wastes, and trotted 

 so purposefully, head in air, for all the world as 

 though it had some weighty object in view. When 

 that object turned out to be nothing but some 

 lichen which the big deer got at by laboriously 

 scratching away the snow, the wolf realized only 

 too well that this was not the animal she ought to 

 have followed, this shy, unassuming, herbage-eating 

 creature I Wisest of wise wolves, as she thought 

 herself, she had been deceived by ornament, and 

 took it for granted that a beast so imposing must 

 be as clever as he looked. The stag was an old 

 fellow, with exceptionally finely palmated horns on 

 the brow and bez tines, and this gave him a grand, 

 rugged appearance such as the wolf had never 

 observed in any caribou before. 



It seemed a direct intervention of Providence 

 that a large brown bear should appear on the scene 

 to put an end to the caribou's existence by driving 

 him over a precipitous canon, down which the 



4 



