Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/209

 and set itself with redoubled rigour to make up for lost time. Storm succeeded furious storm, with intervals of clear, still weather and cold of an intensity that appeared to draw down unmitigated from the spaces of Polar night. Never had the old bull known so savage a winter. But for him and his little family, hardy, well-sheltered from all the winds, and with abundant provender always in reach, neither driving storm nor deathly frost had any special terrors. They fed, grunted, ruminated, slept, blew great clouds of steamy breath from their hot red nostrils, and patiently abided the far-off coming of spring.

Not so, however, the other dwellers of the wilderness,—excepting always, of course, the supremely indifferent porcupine, who, so long as he can find plenty of hemlock twigs and bark to stuff his belly with, pays little heed to cold or heat, to sunshine or black blizzard. The weasels, foxes, lynxes, fishers, all were famishing; for the rabbits, their staple food, were scarce that year, and the grouse and ptarmigan, appalled at the bitterness of the cold, took to burrowing their way deep into the snow-drifts for warmth,—so deep that their scent was lost, and they slept secure from the fiercely digging paws of their hunters. As for the bears, most of them had "holed up" discreetly at the first of the storms, and now, in little rocky caves, or dens hollowed beneath the roots of some