VI. THE BUILDERS. 



to camp. 



CURIOUS bit of wild life came to me 

 at dusk one day in the wilderness. It 

 ■^ was midwinter, and the snow lay deep. 

 i>v&., I was sitting alone on a fallen 



tree, waiting for the moon to rise 

 so that I could follow the faint 

 snowshoe track across a barren, 

 three miles, then thiough a mile 

 of forest to another trail that led 

 I had followed a caribou too far that day, 

 and this was the result — feeling along my own track 

 by moonlight, with the thermometer sinking rapidly 

 to the twenty-below-zero point. 



There is scarcely any twilight in the woods ; in ten 

 minutes it would be quite dark ; and I was wishing 

 that I had blankets and an a.xe, so that I could camp 

 where I was, when a big gray shadow came stealing 

 towards me through the trees. It was a Canada lynx. 

 My fingers gripped the rifle hard, and the right mitten 

 seemed to slip off of itself as I caught the glare of his 

 fierce yellow eyes. 



77 



