44 
Northern Trails . Book I 
lay there all alone, very still, with the new feeling trem¬ 
bling all over him. A long hour passed; a second cub 
was laid beside him, and the mother vanished as before; 
another hour, and the wolf cubs were all together again 
with the mother feeding them. Nor did any of them know 
where they were, nor why they had come, nor the long, 
long way that led back to where the trail began. 
Next day when they were called out to play they saw 
a different and more gloomy landscape, a chaos of 
granite rocks, a forest of evergreen, the white plunge 
and rolling mist of a mountain torrent; but no silver 
sea with fishing-boats drifting over it, like clouds in the 
sea over their heads, and no gray hut with children 
running about like ants on the distant shore. And as 
they played they began for the first time to imitate the 
old mother keeping guard over them, sitting up often to 
watch and listen and sift the winds, trying to under¬ 
stand what fear was, and why they had been taken away 
from the sunny hillside where the world was so much 
bigger and brighter than here. But home is where 
mother is, — that, fortunately, is also true of the little 
Wood Folk, who understand it in their own savage way 
for a season, — and in their wonder at their new sur¬ 
roundings the memory of the old home gradually faded 
away. They never knew with what endless care the 
new den had been chosen; how the mother, in the days 
when she knew she was watched, had searched it out 
