36 



-'Noel 

 and Mooka 



wolf lore learned in sixty years of hunting: 

 how, fortunately for the deer, these enormous 

 wolves had never been abundant and were 

 now very rare, a few having been shot., and 

 more poisoned in the starving times, and the 

 rest having vanished, mysteriously as wolves 

 do, for some unknown reason. Bears, which 

 are easily trapped and shot and whose skins 

 are worth each a month's wages to the fisher- 

 men, still hold their own and even increase 

 on the great island ; while the wolves, once 

 more numerous, are slowly vanishing, though 

 they are never hunted and not even Old 

 Tomah himself could set a trap cunningly 

 enough to catch one. The old hunter told, 

 while Mooka and Noel held their breaths 

 V and drew closer to the light, how once, when 

 he made his camp alone under a cliff on the 

 lake shore, seven huge wolves, white as 

 D the snow, came racing swift and 

 -fgo & silent over the ice straight at the 

 i^ •© ^ ie w hi cn he had barely time to 

 ^tTvV-' ^~^ kindle; how he shot 



two, and the others, 

 seizing - the fish he 







CD 



^r 



3*S>\^ 



