Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/210

 great fallen tree, under a six-foot blanket of snow were comfortably sleeping away the evil time. But a few old males, morose and restless, had as usual refrained from hibernating; and these now, gaunt and savage with hunger, prowled the smitten waste incessantly, ripping rotten tree-trunks open for a poor mouthful of wood-grubs or frost-numbed ants, and filling their paunches with twigs and bitter lichens. One of these fierce wanderers, maddened with his pangs, so far forgot his woods-lore as to pounce upon a plump porcupine and, in spite of its stinging spines, wolf it down greedily. It was his last meal of any sort. His mouth, nose, throat and paws were stuck full of the deadly spines, so barbed that, although he could rub them off, the long needle points remained and swiftly worked their way inwards. These would presently have caused his death, a lingering one; but two or three of the quills which had got down into his stomach were merciful and did their work more quickly. A few days later his lean body, frozen stiff, was found, doubled up in the heart of a spruce thicket, by a pair of prowling lynxes, who thereafter fared sumptuously every day until rumour of the prize got abroad; when foxes, wolverenes and fishers came flocking to the feast and made short work of the huge carcass.

It was this same hunger-madness, too, which drove another bear to the perilous venture of an