THE ODYSSEY OF OLD BILL 101 
west to New York, east till he glimpsed the Con- 
necticut River plains, but never north across 
those shining rails where the monster thundered. 
_But now, with two cows and a calf, he wandered 
down the rocky slope to a wild ravine where it 
was only a jump across the tracks to a rocky 
slope on the other side, drove his charges, re- 
luctant, across, and browsed north into a new 
country. They pushed on, with good cover and 
plentiful feeding for a day and a night, until, at 
dawn, with the rising sun just flushing the snowy 
summits and night still lying like pools of dark- 
ness in the deep ravines, Old Bill stood upon a 
bare, rocky, mountain shoulder and looked into 
Vermont. 
He saw a tumbled world of mountains, higher 
than those behind him, forest clothed, and stretch- 
ing, ever taller, into the far distance, blushed pink 
at first by the rising sun, then misty blue and 
beckoning. Were there other and bigger bulls 
there to challenge? Was it the spell of the north 
that was laid upon him, the colder north which is 
the natural home of the moose, all the way to the 
Arctic Circle? Was it instinct that made him 
