Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/216

 watched with startled gaze the progress of the battle, greeted them with delighted snorts and nuzzlings. Her mother received these demonstrations with indifference. But the great black bull, in his triumph, accepted and returned them with lordly condescension, dimly sensing a time when the youngster would be grown up. Had she been of his own sex, a possible future rival, he would have haughtily ignored her transports, or brusquely rebuffed them. Except in mating season the moose is little apt to be demonstrative.

In a magically short time—so swiftly through the frozen silences travels the news of food,—the solitude around the moose-yard was broken up. The neighbourhood became a place of resort. First arrived the hungry red foxes and the snakily darting white weasels, to gnaw and tear at the great carcasses in the snow, and snarl at each other with jealous hate. These small marauders, though not often in evidence, had never been far from the moose-yard, for they had instinctively anticipated some tragedy which they might profit by. Soon afterwards came three gaunt grey lynxes, driven by hunger, in spite of their morose and solitary instincts, to hunt together with a view to attacking quarry otherwise too powerful for them. Thev drove off the foxes and weasels while they gorged themselves. But one fox, a late arrival, venturing too near in his eagerness to share the feast, was