130 THE MOOSE 



And so the frozen days and nights passed by in 

 dreary sequence, nights irradiated often by the 

 Aurora's glow, days so exactly like the last that 

 the young moose lost track of time, and began 

 to think his life had always held these hours of 

 following the leader's fawn-coloured tail down 

 interminable white tracks winding through ice- 

 bound woods, or of lying for warmth as close as 

 he could get to the little company whose united 

 ascending breaths froze instantly into a faint, filmy 

 shadow of snow-dust. 



Two events stood out and marked eras. In 

 December the magnificent antlers of the moose 

 leader fell off, and left him as ordinary looking, but 

 for his mammoth bulk, as the cows. 



Moosewa felt something sharp strike his shoulder 

 as he lay drowsing in the darkness of a sheltered 

 copse. It frightened him somewhat, but the peace- 

 ful outline of the big bull was reassuring. At the 

 first hint of danger he would have been on his 

 feet. 



Day dawned grey and fog-laden. Through the 

 haze the ungainly forms of the moose loomed 

 spectrally as they followed a peculiarly lop-sided- 

 looking guide. One of his antlers had gone, and 



