6; 
The JVay of the IVolf 
turn, as they scrambled away to the sea, the wolves had 
a lively time of it. Often indeed, spite of three or four 
wolves, a big seal would tumble into the tide, where the 
sharks followed his bloody trail and soon finished him. 
Now for the first time the wolves, led by the rich 
abundance, began to kill more than they needed for 
food and to hide it away, like the squirrels, in anticipa¬ 
tion of the coming winter. Like the blue and the Arctic 
foxes, a strange instinct to store things seems to stir 
dimly at times within them. Occasionally, instead of 
eating and sleeping after a kill, the cubs, led by the 
mother wolf, would hunt half of the day and night and 
carry all they caught to the snow-fields. There each one 
would search out a cranny in the rocks and hide his 
game, covering it over deeply with snow to kill the 
scent of it from the prowling foxes. Then for days at a 
time they would forget the coming winter, and play as 
heedlessly as if the woods would always be as full of 
game as now; and again the mood would be upon 
them strongly, and they would kill all they could find 
and hide it in another place. But the instinct—if indeed 
it were instinct, and not the natural result of the mother’s 
own experience — was weak at best; and the first time 
the cubs were hungry or lazy they would trail off to the 
hidden store. Long before the spring with its bitter 
need was upon them they had eaten everything, and 
had returned to the empty storehouse at least a dozen 
