24 Wilderness Ways. 



when you thought him too feeble to walk. Death 

 calls him gently ; the old wolf stirs deep within him, 

 and he goes away where the master he served will 

 never find him. And so with your cat, which is 

 only skin-deep a domestic animal ; and so with your 

 canary, which in death alone would be free, and beats 

 his failing wings against the cage in which he lived 

 so long content. But these all go away singly, each 

 to his own place. The caribou is the only animal I 

 know that remembers, when his separation comes, the 

 ties which bound him to the herd winter after winter, 

 through sun and storm, in the forest where all was 

 peace and plenty, and on the lonely barrens where the 

 gray wolf howled on his track ; so that he turns with 

 his last strength from the herd he is leaving to the 

 greater herd which has gone before him — still follow- 

 ing his leaders, remembering his first lesson to the end. 

 Sometimes I have wondered whether this also were 

 taught in the caribou school ; whether once in his 

 life Megaleep were led to the spot and made to pass 

 through it, so that he should feel its meaning and 

 remember. That is not likely; for the one thing 

 which an animal cannot understand is death. And 

 there were no signs of living caribou anywhere near 

 the place that I discovered; though down at the 

 other end of the lake their tracks were everywhere. 



