Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/152

 be returning. If running waters crossed his path, he swam them. If broad lakes intervened, he skirted them.

From time to time he became aware that others of his kind were moving with him—but each one furtive, silent, solitary, self-sufficing, like himself. He heeded them not, nor they him; but all, impelled by one urge which could but be blindly obeyed, kept drifting onward toward the west and north. At length, when the first snows began, Mustela stopped, in a forest not greatly different from that which he had left, but even wilder, denser, more unvisited by the foot of man. And here, the wanderlust having suddenly left his blood, he found himself a new hole, lined it warm with moss and dry grasses, and resumed his hunting with all the ancient zest.

Back in Mustela's old hunting grounds a lonely trapper, finding no more golden sable in his snares, but only mink and lynx and fox, grumbled regretfully:

"The martens hev quit. We'll see no more of 'em round these parts for another ten year."

But he had no notion why they had quit; nor had anyone else—not even Mustela himself.