18 Northern Trails. Book I 
downwards to where the green woods began and rolled 
in vast billows to the harbor, which shone and sparkled 
in the sun, yet seemed no bigger than their mother’s 
paw. Fishing-boats with shining sails hovered over it, 
like dragon-flies, going and coming from the little houses 
that sheltered together under the opposite mountain, 
like a cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine 
stump. Most wonderful, most interesting of all was the 
little gray hut on the shore, almost under their feet, 
where little Noel and the Indian children played with 
the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet 
the fishermen in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf cubs are 
like collies in this, that they seem to have a natural in¬ 
terest, perhaps a natural kinship with man, and next to 
their own kind nothing arouses their interest like a 
group of children playing. 
So the little cubs took their first glimpse of the big 
world, of mountains and sea and sunshine, and children 
playing on the shore, and the world was altogether too 
wonderful for little heads to comprehend. Nevertheless 
one plain impression remained, the same that you see 
in the ears and nose and stumbling feet and wagging 
tail of every puppy-dog you meet on the streets, that 
this bright world is a famous place, just made a-purpose 
for little ones to play in. Sitting on their tails in a sol¬ 
emn row the wolf cubs bent their heads and pointed 
their noses gravely at the sea. There it was, all silver 
