THE ODYSSEY OF OLD BILL 79 
strange road, belching smoke. They all sprang 
higher up the ledges, and beneath them the 20th 
Century Limited (the Boston and Albany sec- 
tion) thundered by. Men and women were sit- 
ting at the windows of the parlor cars, in great 
easy chairs, hurtling luxuriously through the 
landscape. But they did not see the four wild 
creatures bounding up the rocks above, their nos- 
trils stung with the acrid coal smoke smell, their 
eyes big with alarm. 
Yet the strange monster had not hurt them, 
apparently it had not tried to hurt them. It had 
stayed right on that shining roadway. Even 
little Bill realized this. It was their first lesson 
in the new freedom. 
However, it takes more than one lesson to 
teach a cosmic truth even to so clever an animal 
as a moose, and Bill’s father, the leader, was still 
wary. He did his best to keep his little herd to 
the cover of the woods. The trouble was, they 
were always getting out of the cover of the woods, 
and never knowing when it was going to happen, 
either. In the next few days they stumbled on 
roads, on houses, en odd animals which they didn’t 
