102 THE MOOSE 



wind, girdling all the wild world with mists. 

 Gradually he travelled downwards, learning many 

 lessons on his way, most valuable of all how best 

 to pass easily over giant fallen pines — reminders of 

 winter's tempest — how to avoid unseen tree-stumps 

 waiting to trip up the unwary, and how to get 

 through stoutly-laced alder thongs grown again 

 and overgrown, stretched for the throwing down of 

 careless steppers. 



He perfected himself in swimming, crossing the 

 widest streams and lakes persistently, and taught 

 himself how to thread his way among slippery 

 rocks, polished to ebony by the rushing, swirling 

 waters of all the centuries. 



Once as he waded through a swiftly rushing 

 tributary streamlet of melting snow, not deep 

 enough to swim, and dangerous because of its sub- 

 merged boulders, he was almost carried away, and 

 becoming frightened as he stumbled and foundered, 

 gained a small black boulder, on which he stood for 

 a space poised, four feet together, like a gigantic 

 klipspringer. He tried not to look down into the 

 swirling whiteness, where black rocks — the Indians 

 always say that where the waters are white the 

 rocks are black — showed above the swirling waters, 



