Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/105

 stuck full, at the one slashing blow, with beautiful, polished, black-tipped, white quills.

"Thanks, awfully, old chap," said he. "They are lovely specimens, so I won't tease you any more," and carrying his prize carefully before him he turned back to the canoe. Quills glared after him till his long form had vanished through the trees. Then his anger cooled, and exultation at his easy and signal triumph took its place. His spines went down till they were hidden beneath the dark fur and he seemed to have shrunk to half his size.

The stress of his emotions having made him hungry—anything will do to make a porcupine hungry—he crawled down to the edge of the water and fell to feasting in a patch of arrow weed.

Autumn on the Tobique passed swiftly, in a blaze of color. A few sudden touches of frost in the night—and then the maples stood glorious in scarlet and crimson, the birches and poplars shimmered in pale gold, the ash trees smouldered in dull purple, and the rowans flaunted their great bunches of waxy, orange-vermilion berries against the solid, dark-green background of hemlock and spruce. The partridge coveys whirred on strong wings across the glowing corridors of the forest, under a sky of sharp cobalt. For a day or two