Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/208

 down, and to tread out their trails to all the choicest thickets. Then the snow set in, in earnest. For four whole days it snowed, steadily, thickly, blindingly, as it only can snow when it tries on the high barrens of northern New Brunswick. All the wilderness world was muffled in a white silence. The moose were kept busy trampling out the paths that they might not be utterly obliterated. In the course of this task the great bull shed his mighty and magnificent but no longer needed antlers. He had grown them, in all their formidable splendour, during the past summer, for the sole purpose of battling with his rivals in the mating season; for against other adversaries he used no weapons except his knife-edged, pile-driving fore-hoofs. For weeks, the network of copious blood vessels at the roots of his antlers, which had nourished their marvellous growth, had been shrinking and drying up. And now, whether of their own weight or at the pull of an overhanging branch, they dropped off, painlessly, and were buried in the snow. The bull merely shook his huge head for a moment or two, as if surprised; and then went on with his trail-breaking, glad to be relieved of the useless burden.

Winter, having started so late and so half-heartedly, now seemed to repent its irresolution,