i7 
Where the Trail Begins 
Satisfied at. last with her silent investigation she 
turned her head towards the den. There was no sound, 
only one of those silent, unknown communications that 
pass between animals. Instantly there was a scratching, 
scurrying, whining, and three cubs tumbled out of the 
dark hole in the rocks, with fuzzy yellow fur and bright 
eyes and sharp ears and noses, like collies, all blinking 
and wondering and suddenly silent at the big bright 
world which they had never seen before, so different 
from the dark den under the rocks. 
Indeed it was a marvelous world that the little cubs 
looked upon when they came out to blink and wonder 
in the June sunshine. Contrasts everywhere, that made 
the world seem too big for one little glance to compre¬ 
hend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and 
quivered on the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud 
shadows rested for hours, as if asleep, or swept over the 
mountain side in an endless game of fox-and-geese with 
the sunbeams. Here the birds trilled, the bees hummed 
in the bluebells, the brook roared and sang on its way 
to the sea; while over all the harmony of the world 
brooded a silence too great to be disturbed. Sunlight 
and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines and dazzling 
mountain tops, mayflowers and singing birds and rus¬ 
tling winds filled all the earth with color and movement 
and melody. From under their very feet great masses of 
rock, tossed and tumbled as by a giant’s play, stretched 
