Noel and Mooka 
33 
after a stray fishbone or an old sealskin boot, making a 
great rowdydow in the still night; and only the smell 
of man, or the report of an old gun fired at him by some 
brave woman out of the half-open window, kept him 
from pushing his enormous weight against the very 
doors of the cabins. 
Thinking of all these things, Mooka forgot her fears 
of the white wolves, remembering with a kind of sym¬ 
pathy how hungry all these shy prowlers must be to 
leave their own haunts, whence the rabbits and seals 
had vanished, and venture boldly into the yards of 
men. As for Noel, he remembered with regret that 
he was too small at the time to use the long bow 
which he now carried on his rabbit and goose hunts; 
and as he took it from the wall, thrumming its chord 
of caribou sinew and fingering the sharp edge of a 
long arrow, he was hoping for just such another win¬ 
ter, longing to try his skill and strength on some of 
these midnight prowlers — a lynx, perhaps, not to be¬ 
gin too largely on a polar bear. So there was no fear 
at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed up 
the brook next day to watch at the wolf’s den. And 
even when Noel found a track, a light oval track, larger 
but more slender than a dog’s, in some moist sand close 
beside their own footprints and evidently following them, 
they remembered only the young wolf that had followed 
Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly. 
