HIS FIRST WINTER 127 



to find a family of squirrels. He had known them 

 all the summer, watched the little ones grow up, 

 marked them down, indeed, in readiness for such 

 hard times as the present. They had curled up for 

 the winter in a plenteous storehouse, and now they 

 must give up their lives that Carcajou, the glutton, 

 might survive. 



Alas ! the Providence designed to watch over 

 squirrels had moved them to sleep elsewhere. 



Clumsily, the shaggy wolverine dropped dis- 

 consolately to the snow. Across the frozen open 

 waste a pine-marten, distant relative of Carcajou's, 

 trailed nose to the track of a long-passed rabbit. 

 Moving rapidly, his broad, flat feet buoyed him up 

 on the softest surface. 



A dark shadow falling athwart his path brought 

 him up in a weasel-like wriggle, and almost in- 

 stantly a great eagle owl, in phosphorescent 

 plumage, pinioned the hunter against a hummock 

 of ice. In a series of protesting squeaks the 

 marten closed his hunting-days. 



The wolverine saw it all, and for the first time 

 cannabalism presented itself with all its insidious 

 force. The flesh of marten, sauced even by hunger, 

 is no great treat, and few of the carnivorous animals 



