2 THE MOOSE 



ungainly little creature, who lay up for hours at a 

 time on a soft bed of rotting leaves, as he tried hard 

 to learn the art of mimicry his mother talked so 

 much about, how to blend himself into the land- 

 scape, and how to turn himself into a colourable 

 imitation of a tree root. His ears were enormous, 

 and turned this way and that, one after the other, 

 almost automatically, listening, listening. When 

 he caught some small, sweet sound of the mur- 

 murous forest people or the splash of a trout mid- 

 stream, his ears did not wait to locate and hold the 

 noise as his mother's ears waited, but went on 

 turning backwards and forwards uninterruptedly. 

 It was as if the great flaps were so pleased with an 

 hitherto unknown accomplishment that they could 

 not but practice it. 



Long, pale-coloured legs supported the calf's 

 black-brown body, which was dotted over with 

 noticeably lighter markings in the shape of well- 

 defined spots, beauty marks his mother had long 

 since lost. His hair was slightly roughed with the 

 frizziness of extreme youth, like that of a new-born 

 domestic calf, whose height would be just about 

 that of the moose baby. His tail was a ridiculous 

 tuft, hardly a tail at all, his neck so short that it 



