GREY LYNX'S LAST HUNTING 19 



of some fresher trail. His mate, though hot 

 with scorn and disappointment, ranged along 

 within a few leaps of him. In such a famine 

 season it was to the interest of both that they 

 should hunt together, so far as their morose 

 and distrustful natures made it possible. 



The stillness of death itself lay on the forest. 

 The very air seemed brittle under the intense 

 cold. The glare of the unclouded moon was 

 glassy, hard, implacable. It seemed to devi- 

 talize even the strong, stealthy forms of the 

 gliding lynxes, to change them into a pair of 

 drifting ghosts, which turned their heads 

 from side to side as they went, and flashed 

 from their eyes a pale, blasting fire. 



But Grey Lynx had a very unghostly 

 hunger as had also his mate. Suddenly 

 his unerring eyes detected, under a spreading 

 hemlock, a spot where the snow had been 

 disturbed. To a less keen vision it would 

 have been nothing, but to Grey Lynx it was 

 a clear, unmistakable indication. Swerving 

 sharply from his trail, he pounced upon the 

 little roughness in the snow, and began digging 

 furiously with his forepaws. In a moment 

 he was half buried, for the snow, here in the 

 shelter of the trees, lay softer than in the 

 wind-beaten fields. Sniffing his way by his 

 well-instructed nose, he followed a deep trail 



B 



