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appetites sharpened by the long fast, was 

 already stirring briskly in every covert. 



When March came, the bitterest month of 

 all for the Wood Folk, even Wayeeses was """^J 

 often hard pressed to find a living. Small 

 game grew scarce and very wild ; the caribou 

 had wandered far away to other ranges ; and 

 the cubs would dig for hours after a mouse, 

 or stalk a snowbird, or wait with endless pa- 

 tience for a red squirrel to stop his chatter 

 and come down to search under the snow 

 for a fir cone that he had hidden there in 

 the good autumn days. And once, when the 

 hunger within was more nipping than the 

 eager cold without, one of the cubs found a 

 bear sleeping in his winter den among the 

 rocks. With a sharp hunting cry, that sang 

 like a bullet over the frozen wastes, he called 

 the whole pack about him. While the rest lay 

 in hiding the old he-wolf approached warily 

 and scratched Mooween out of his den, and 

 then ran away to entice the big brute into the 

 open ground, where the pack rolled in upon 

 him and killed him in a terrible fight before he 

 had fairly shaken the sleep out of his eyes. 



