166 THE MOOSE 



throughout his later pick -and -choose career he 

 never came upon another cow moose whose dis- 

 cernment seemed so comfortingly acute. 



The secret of it all ? She flattered him ; pan- 

 dered to his vanity ; and, being of the male 

 persuasion, he sopped it up like a sponge. It 

 was a flattery, to begin with, that so old a cow 

 should stoop from her heights to love a young, 

 callow, practically hornless, animal like himself 

 when there were so many magnificent buUs in 

 the forest from which to choose. Being green in 

 judgment, the youngster did not know that the 

 cow's day was gone, that what he had picked out 

 of the wilderness lucky-bag was a sort of throw 

 out, a derelict no other bull admired. 



And since he never knew, what matter ! 



She did not live long enough to let him know, 

 or he must have found out eventually. 



They came through the winter, a particularly 

 hard one, all right, yarding up with a bad-tempered 

 old bull, who charged any of the little company 

 who dared cross him in any way, and kept the 

 band together because none of the members had 

 sufficient courage to sheer off*; and when spring 

 thawed out the frozen world, and the cows streaked 



