The Babe shuddered, but heroically refrained from interrupting.

"Of course the stump soon healed up," continued Uncle Andy, "but she always found the absence of that paw most inconvenient, especially when she was digging burrows. She used to find herself digging them on the bias, and coming out where she did not at all expect to.

"But to return to Young Grumpy. While he was yet very young his three-legged mother, who had seen him and his brothers and sisters eating grass quite comfortably, decided that they were big enough to look out for themselves. She refused to nurse them any more. Then she turned them all out of the burrow. When they came presently scurrying back again, hoping it was all an unhappy joke, she nipped them most unfeelingly. Their father snored. There was no help in that quarter. They scurried dejectedly forth again.

"Outside, in the short pasture grass and scattered ox-eye daisies, they looked at each other suspiciously, and each felt that somehow it was the other fellow's fault. Aggrieved and miserable, they went rambling off, each his own way, to face alone what Fate might have in store for him. And Young Grumpy, looking up from a melancholy but consoling feast which he was making on a mushroom, found himself alone in the world.

"He didn't care a fig. You see, he was so grumpy. Not knowing where to go, he strolled up the hill and into the fir woods. Here he came upon a very old, moth-eaten, feeble-looking woodchuck, who was very busy in a half-hearted way digging himself a hole. Suddenly he stopped. Young Grumpy did not think it was any sort of a hole for a woodchuck, but the old fellow seemed satisfied with it. He curled himself up in it, almost in plain view, and went straight to sleep. Young Grumpy strolled off scornfully. When he came back that way, a few hours later, he found the old woodchuck still in exactly the same position as before. He never stirred or scolded even when Young Grumpy came up and squeaked quite close to his ear. Seized suddenly with a vague uneasiness, Young Grumpy nosed at him curiously. The old woodchuck's body was chill and rigid. It created a most unpleasant impression, and, not knowing why he did so, Young Grumpy hurried forth from the dark wood and down into the sunlit pasture to which he was accustomed.

"For some days he wandered about the pasture, sleeping under stumps and in mossy hollows, and fortunately escaping, by reason of his light, rusty-gray color, the eyes of passing hawks. At last chance, or his nose for good living, led him down to the clover meadow adjoining Anderson's barnyard.

"It was here that his adventures may be said to have begun.

"Just as he was happily filling himself with clover, a white dog, with short-cropped ears standing up stiffly, came by and stopped to look at him with bright, interested eyes. Young Grumpy, though the stranger was big enough to take him in two mouthfuls, felt not frightened but annoyed. He gave a chuckling squeak of defiance and rushed straight at the dog.

"Now, this was the Boy's bull terrier, Major, and he had been severely trained to let small, helpless creatures alone. He had got it into his head that all such creatures were the Boy's property, and so to be guarded and respected. He was afraid lest he might hurt this cross little animal, and get into trouble with the Boy. So he kept jumping out of the way, stiff-leggedly, as if very much amused, and at the same time he kept barking, as if to call the Boy to come and see. Young Grumpy, feeling very big, followed him up with short, threatening rushes, till he found himself just at the open gate leading into the farmyard.

"Parading solemnly before the gate was a big gray gander with only one eye. That one eye, extra keen and fierce, caught sight of Young Grumpy, and probably mistook him for an immense rat, thief of eggs and murderer of goslings. With a harsh hiss and neck outstretched till it was like a snake, the great bird darted at him.

"Young Grumpy hesitated. After the manner of his kind, he sat upon his haunches to hesitate. The gander seemed to him very queer, and perhaps dangerous.

"At this critical moment the white dog interfered. In his eyes Young Grumpy belonged to the Boy, and was therefore valuable property. He ran at the gander. The gander, recognizing his authority, withdrew, haughty and protesting. Young Grumpy followed with a triumphant rush, and, of course, took all the credit to himself.

"This led him into the farmyard. Here he promptly forgot both the dog and the gander. It was such a strange place, and full of such strange smells. He was about to turn back into the more familiar clover when, as luck would have it, he stumbled upon a half-eaten carrot which had been dropped by one of the horses. How good it smelled! And then, how good it tasted! Oh, no! the place where such things were to be found was not a place for him to leave in a hurry!

"As he was feasting greedily on the carrot the Boy appeared, with the white dog at his heels. He did not look nearly so terrible as the gander. So, angry at being disturbed, and thinking he had come for the carrot, Young Grumpy ran at him at once.

"But the Boy did not run away. Surprised at his courage, Young Grumpy stopped short, at a distance of two or three feet from the Boy's stout shoes, sat upon his haunches with his little skinny black hands over his chest, and began to gurgle and squeak harsh threats. The Boy laughed, and stretched out a hand to touch him. Young Grumpy snapped so savagely, however, that the Boy snatched back his hand and stood observing him with amused interest, waving off the white dog lest the latter should interrupt. Young Grumpy went on blustering with his muffled squeaks for perhaps a minute. Then, seeing that the Boy was neither going to run away nor fight, he dropped on all fours indifferently and returned to his carrot.

"There was nothing pleased the Boy better than seeing the harmless wild creatures get familiar about the place. He went now and fetched a saucer of milk from the dairy, and set it down beside Young Grumpy, who scolded at him, but refused to budge an inch. The yellow cat—an amiable soul, too well fed to hunt even mice with any enthusiasm—followed the Boy, with an interested eye on the saucer. At sight of Young Grumpy her back went up, her tail grew big as a bottle, and she spat disapprovingly. As the stranger paid her no attention, however, she sidled cautiously up to the milk and began to lap it.

"The sound of her lapping caught Young Grumpy's attention. It was a seductive sound. Leaving the remains of his carrot, he came boldly up to the saucer. The yellow cat flattened back her ears, growled, and stood her ground till he was within a foot of her. Then, with an angry 'pf-f-f' she turned tail and fled. The stranger was so calmly sure of himself that she concluded he must be some new kind of skunk—and her respect for all skunks was something tremendous.

"Having finished the milk and the carrot, Young Grumpy felt a pressing need of sleep. Turning his back on the Boy and the dog as if they were not worth noticing, he ambled off along the garden fence, looking for a convenient hole. The one-eyed gander, who had been watching him with disfavor from the distance, saw that he was now no longer under the protection of the white dog, and came stalking up from the other end of the yard to have it out with him—thief of eggs and murderer of goslings as the bird mistook him to be! But Young Grumpy, having found a cool-looking hole under the fence, had whisked into it and vanished.

"As matters stood now, Young Grumpy felt himself quite master of the situation. His heartless mother was forgotten. Farmyard, clover-field, and cool green garden were all his. Had he not routed all presumptuous enemies but the Boy? And the latter seemed very harmless. But a few days the garden occupied all his attention—when he was not busy enlarging and deepening his hole under the fence and digging a second entrance to it. He noticed that the Boy had a foolish habit of standing and watching him; but to this he had no serious objection, the more so as he found that the Boy's presence was often accompanied by a saucer of milk.

"It was not till after several days of garden life that, lured by the memory of the carrot, he again visited the barnyard. At first it seemed to be quite deserted. And there was no sign of a carrot anywhere. Then he caught sight of the yellow cat, and scurried toward her, thinking perhaps it was her fault there were no carrots. She fluffed her tail, gave a yowl of indignation, and raced into the barn. Neither the white dog, nor the Boy, nor the one-eyed gander was anywhere in sight.

"Young Grumpy decided that it was a poor place, the barnyard. He was on the point of turning back to the green abundance of the garden, when a curious clucking sound attracted his attention. At the other side of the yard he saw a red hen in a coop. A lot of very young chickens, little yellow balls of down, were running about outside the coop. Young Grumpy strolled over. The chickens did not concern him in the least. He didn't know what they were, and, as no flesh was in his eyes good to eat, he didn't care. But he hoped they might have such a thing as a carrot about them."

"Oh-h-h! What would they have a carrot for?" protested the Babe.

Uncle Andy scorned to notice this remark. "When Young Grumpy approached the coop," he continued, "the red hen squawked frantically, and the chickens all ran in under her wings. Young Grumpy eyed her with curiosity for a moment, as she screamed at him with open beak and ruffled up all her feathers. But in the coop was a big slice of turnip, at which she had been pecking. He knew at once this would be good, perhaps as good as a carrot, and he flattened himself against the bars trying to get in at it.

"The next moment he got a great surprise. The red hen hurled herself at him with such violence that, although the bars protected him, he was almost knocked over. He received a smart jab from her beak, and her bristling feathers came through the bars in a fashion that rather took away his breath. He was furious. Again and again he strove to force his way in, now on one side, now on the other. But always that fiery bunch of beak and claw and feathers seemed to burst in his face. Had it not been for the bars, indeed, the red hen would have given him an awful mauling. But this, of course, he was too self-confident to suspect. With characteristic obstinacy, he kept up the struggle for fully five minutes, while the terrified chickens filled the air with their pipings and the hen screamed herself hoarse. Then, feeling a little sore, to be sure, but very certain that he had impressed the hen, he strolled off to look for some delicacy less inaccessible than that piece of turnip.

"At this point the one-eyed gander came waddling up from the goose pond. He was lonely and bad-tempered, for his two wives had been killed by a fox that spring, and the Boy had not yet found him a new mate. Young Grumpy looked at the big gray bird and recalled the little unpleasantness of their previous encounter.

"'Oh, ho!' said he to himself—if woodchucks ever do talk to themselves—'I'll just give that ugly chap beans, like I did the other day.' And he went scurrying across the yard to see about it.

"To his surprise, the gander paid him no attention whatever. You see, he was on the side of the gander's blind eye.

"Now, Young Grumpy was so puzzled by this indifference that, instead of rushing right in and biting the haughty bird, he sat up on his haunches at a distance of some five or six feet and began to squeak his defiance. The gander turned his head. Straightway he opened his long yellow bill, gave vent to a hiss like the steam from an escape pipe, stuck out his snaky neck close to the ground, lifted his broad gray-and-white wings, and charged.

"Before Young Grumpy had time even to wonder if he had been imprudent or not, the hard elbow of one of those wings caught him a blow on the ear and knocked him head over heels. At the same time it swept him to one side, and the gander rushed on straight over the spot where he had been sitting.

"Young Grumpy picked himself up, startled and shaken. The thing had been so unexpected. He would have rather liked to run away. But he was too angry and too obstinate. He just sat up on his haunches again, intending to make another and more successful attack as soon as his head stopped buzzing.

"The gander, meanwhile, was surprised also. He could not understand how his enemy had got out of the way so quickly. He stared around, and then, turning his one eye skyward, as if he thought Young Grumpy might have gone that way, he trumpeted a loud honka-honka-honk—kah.

"For some reason this strange cry broke Young Grumpy's nerve. He scuttled for his hole his jet-black heels kicking up the straws behind him. As soon as he began to run, of course, the gander saw him and swept after him with a ferocious hissing. But Young Grumpy had got the start. He dived into his hole just as the gander brought up against the fence.

"Now, the moment he found himself inside his burrow, all Young Grumpy's courage returned. He wheeled and stuck his head out again, as much as to say, 'Now come on, if you dare!"

"The gander came on promptly—so promptly, in fact, that the lightning stroke of his heavy bill knocked Young Grumpy far back into the hole again.

"In a great rage, the gander darted his head into the hole. Chattering with indignation, Young Grumpy set his long teeth into that intruding bill, and tried to pull it further in. The gander, much taken aback at this turn of affairs, tried to pull it out again. For perhaps half a minute it was a very good tug-of-war. Then the superior weight and strength of the great bird, with all the advantage of his beating wings, suddenly triumphed, and Young Grumpy, too pig-headed to let go his hold, was jerked forth once more into the open.

"The next moment another blow from one of those mighty wing elbows all but stunned him, and his grip relaxed. He made a groping rush for the burrow, but in that same instant the gander's great bill seized him by the back of the neck and lifted him high into the air.

"This was very near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, crawled back into his hole.

"The white dog opened his mouth from ear to ear, and looked up at the Boy with an unmistakable grin. The Boy, half laughing, half sympathetic, went and peered into the hole.

"'I guess you'd better keep out of Old Wall-Eye's way after this!' said he.

"And Young Grumpy did. Whenever the one-eyed gander was in the yard, then Young Grumpy stayed in the garden."



CHAPTER IV

LITTLE SWORD AND THE INKMAKER

Out across the shining expanse of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue butterfly, as blue as if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake. It was a foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from shore, and over that lonely, treacherous element which has such scant mercy for butterflies. The turquoise wings dipped and rose, sometimes coming so close to the water that the Babe caught his breath, thinking the frail voyager's eyes were unable to distinguish between the crystal purity of the water and that of the air. At last a wing tip, or more likely the tip of the velvet tail, brushed the surface. It was only the lightest touch; and instantly, suddenly, as if startled by the chill contact, the azure flutterer rose again. In the same instant the water swirled heavily beneath her, a little sucking whirlpool appeared shattering the mirror, and circular ripples began to widen quickly and smoothly from the break.

"That was a big fellow!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. But the Babe said nothing, being too intent upon the aerial voyager's career.

For two or three moments the flake of sky fluttered higher. Then, as the ripples smoothed themselves out, she seemed to forget, and began to descend again as if lured downward by her own dainty reflection. Yet she had not quite forgotten, for now she only came within six or seven inches of the traitorous surface. Now her heavenly wings supported her for a moment almost motionless.

In that moment a splendid shape, gleaming like a bolt of silver, shot a clear foot into the air and fell back with a massive splash. The turquoise butterfly was gone.

"Oh—h!" cried the Babe, almost with a sob in his voice. He loved the blue butterflies as he loved no others of their brilliant and perishing kindred.

"Gee!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. "But he's a whale!"

The Babe, in his surprise at this remarkable statement, forgot to mourn for the fate of the blue butterfly.

"Why, Uncle Andy," he protested. "I didn't know whales could live here in this little lake."

Uncle Andy made a despairing gesture. "Oh," he murmured wearily, "a fellow has to be so careful what he says to you! The next time I make a metaphorical remark in your presence, I'll draw a diagram to go with it!"

The Babe looked puzzled. He was on the point of asking what "a metaphorical" was, and also "a diagram"; but he inferred that there were no whales, after all, in Silverwater. He had misunderstood Uncle Andy's apparently simple statement of fact. And he felt convicted of foolishness. Anxious to reinstate himself in his uncle's approval by an unexpected display of knowledge he waived "metaphorical" aside, let "diagram" remain a mystery, and remarked disinterestedly:

"Well, I'm glad there ain't any swordfish in Silverwater."

"Bless the child!" cried Uncle Andy. "Whatever has been putting swordfish into your head?"

"Bill!" replied the Babe truthfully.

"And what do you know about swordfish, then?" proceeded his uncle.

The Babe was much flattered at the unusual favor of being allowed to air his information.

"They're awful!" he explained. "They're as big as a canoe. And they've got a sword as long as your leg, Uncle Andy, right in their tail, so they can stab whales and porpoises with it, just carelessly, without looking round, so as to make pretend it was an accident. And they're quicker than greased lightning, Bill says. So you see, if there was one here in the lake, we couldn't ever go in swimming."

Uncle Andy refrained from smiling. He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe for half a minute, while the Babe waited for his verdict. At length he said, between puffs:

"Well, now, there's quite a lot of truth in that, considering that it's one of Bill's yarns. The swordfish does carry a sword. And he does jab it into things, whales, sharks, boats, seals, anything whatever that he thinks might be good to eat or that he does not like the looks of. And you are quite correct in thinking that the lake would not be a health-resort for us if it was occupied by a healthy swordfish. But in one particular Bill has got you badly mixed up. The swordfish carries his sword not in his tail, but on the tip of his snout more like a bayonet than a sword. I don't think Bill has ever been at all intimate with swordfish—eh, what?"

The Babe shook his blonde head sadly over this instance of Bill's inaccuracy.

"And are they as big as Bill says?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes! He's all right there!" assented Uncle Andy. "When they are quite grown up they are sometimes as long as a canoe, a seventeen or eighteen foot canoe. And they are quick as 'greased lightning' all right!"

"But how big are they when they're little?" pursued the Babe, getting around to his favorite line of investigation.

"Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle Andy. "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing sword-fish."

"I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did not find things just hatched very interesting.

"I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly. "Of course when they are first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn. But then things begin to hum."

"Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with anticipation.

"Well," began Uncle Andy slowly, looking far across the lake as if he saw things that the Babe could not see, "in one way and another, partly by good luck and partly by good management, Little Sword succeeded in dodging his enemies till he had grown to be about two feet in length, without counting the six inches or so of sharp, tapering blade that stood straight out from the tip of his nose. He was as handsome a youngster as you would wish to see, slender, gracefully tapering to the base of the broad, powerful tail, wide-finned, radiant in silver and blue-green, and with a splendid crest-like dorsal fin of vivid ultramarine extending almost the whole length of his back. His eyes were large, and blazed with a savage fire. Hanging poised a few feet above the tops of the waving, rose-and-purple sea-anemones and the bottle-green trailers of seaweed, every fin tense and quivering, he was ready to dart in any direction where a feast or a fight might seem to be waiting for him.

"You see, the mere fact that he was alive at all was proof that he had come triumphantly through many terrible dangers, so it was no wonder he had a good deal of confidence in himself. And his shapely little body was so packed full of energy, so thrilling with vitality, that he felt himself already a sort of lord in those shoal-water domains.

"But with all his lively experiences, there were things, lots of things, which Little Sword didn't know even yet."

"I guess so!" murmured the Babe, suddenly impressed with the extent of his own ignorance.

"For instance," Uncle Andy went on, ignoring the interruption, "he had not yet learned anything about the Inkmaker."

Here he paused impressively, as if to lure the Babe on. But into the latter's head popped so many questions all together, at the mention of a creature with so strange a name, that for the moment he could not for the life of him get any one of them into words. He merely gasped. And Uncle Andy, delighted with this apparent self-restraint, went on graciously.

"You're improving a lot," said he. "You're getting quite a knack of holding your tongue. Well, you're going to know all about it in half a minute.

"Little Sword caught sight of a queer, watery-pinkish, speckled creature on the bottom, just crossing a space of clear sand. It was about twice as long as himself, with a pair of terrible big, ink-black eyes, and a long bunch of squirming feelers growing out of its head like leaf-stalks out of the head of a beet. He noticed that two of these feelers were twice as long as the rest, which did not seem to him a matter of the least importance. But he noticed at the same time that the creature looked soft and good to eat. The next instant, like a ray of light flashed suddenly, he darted at it.

"But swift as he was, the pale creature's inky eyes had noted him in time. His feelers bunched suddenly tight and straight, and he shot backwards, at the same moment spouting a jet of black fluid from beneath his beaked mouth. The black jet spread instantly in a thick cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword could not see through it at all. Instead of the soft flesh he had expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a mass of sticky anemones, shearing them from their base.

"In a fury, Little Sword dashed this way and that, trusting to luck that he would strike his elusive enemy in the darkness. But that enemy's eyes, with their enormous bulging surface and the jetty background to their lenses, could see clearly where the jewel-like eyes of the young swordfish could make out nothing. Little Sword, emerging into the half light at the edge of the cloud, was just about to give up the idle search, when something small but firm fastened itself upon his side, so sharply that it seemed to bite into the flesh.

"Little Sword's tense muscles quivered at the shock, and he gave a mighty leap which should, by all his customary reckoning, have carried him fifty feet from the spot. To his horrified amazement he did not go as many inches, nor the half of it! And then another something, small but terrible, fastened itself upon his shoulder.

"Then the black, murky cloud thinned quite away; and Little Sword saw what had happened. The pale creature, having reached a rock to which he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned savagely upon his rash assailant. Little Sword was the prisoner of those two longer tentacles. They were trying to drag him down within reach of the other feelers, which writhed up at him like a lot of hideous snakes."

"Ugh!" cried the Babe with a shudder. "But how did they hold on to him?"

"You see," said Uncle Andy, "every feeler, long or short, had a row of saucer-shaped suckers along its underside, like the heads of those rubber-tipped arrows which I've seen you shooting at the wall, and which stick where they strike. Only these suckers could hold on, I can tell you, so fast that you could never have pulled off even the littlest of them.

"Little Sword looked down into the awful eyes of the Inkmaker, and realized that he had made a great mistake. But he was game all through. It was not for a swordfish, however young, to give in to any odds. Besides, just below those two great eyes, which stared up at him without ever a wink, he saw a terrible beak of a mouth, which opened and shut as if impatient to get hold of him. This sight was calculated to encourage him to exert himself, if he had needed any more encouragement than the grip of those two, pale, writhing feelers on his flesh.

"Now, for his size, Little Sword was putting up a tremendous fight. His broad, fluked tail and immense fins churned the water amazingly, and enabled him to spring this way and that in spite of all the efforts of the two long tentacles to hold him still. Nevertheless, he was slowly drawn downwards, till one of the shorter feelers reached for a hold upon him. He darted at it, and by a lucky plunge of his sword cut its snaky tip clean off. It twisted back out of the way, like a startled worm; and Little Sword lunged at the next one. He pierced it all right, but at a point where it was so thick that the stroke did not sever it, and the tip, curling over, fastened upon him. At the same moment another feeler fixed itself upon the base of his tail, half paralyzing his struggles.

"Little Sword was now being drawn implacably downwards. In his fierce rage he struck at everything in reach, but he was too closely held to inflict any serious wounds. He was within eight or nine inches of those awful, unwinking, ink-black eyes. The great beak opened upwards at him eagerly. It looked as if his career was at an end—when the Fates of the Deep Sea decided otherwise. Apparently they had more use for Little Sword than they had for the Inkmaker. A long shadow dropped straight downward. It missed Little Sword by an inch or two. And the gaping, long-toothed jaws of an immense barracouta closed upon the head of the Inkmaker, biting him clean in halves. The blind body curled backwards spasmodically; and the tentacles, shorn off at the roots, fell aimlessly and helplessly apart. Little Sword flashed away, trailing his limp captors behind him till they dropped off. And the barracouta ate the remains of the Inkmaker at his leisure. He had no concern to those swordfish when there was tender and delicious squid to be had; for the Inkmaker, you know, was just a kind of big squid, or cuttlefish."

"But what's a barracouta?" demanded the Babe hurriedly.

"Well, he's just a fish!" said Uncle Andy. "But he's a very savage and hungry fish, some three or four feet long, with tremendous jaws like a pickerel's. And he lives only in the salt water, fortunately. He's not a nice fellow, either, to have around when you're swimming, I can tell you!"

"Why?" queried the Babe.

But Uncle Andy ignored the question firmly, and went on with his story.

"After this adventure Little Sword kept a very sharp look-out for the pallid, squirming tentacles, sometimes reaching out from a dark hole in the rocks or from under a mantle of seaweed, which he knew to belong to one of the Inkmakers. He hated the whole tribe with bitter hatred; but at the same time his caution was unsleeping. He bided his time for vengeance, and used his sword on crabs and flatfish and fat groupers. And so he grew at a great rate, till in the swelling sense of his power and swiftness his caution began to fade away. Even the incident itself faded from his memory, but not the hatred which had sprung from it, or the knowledge which it had taught him.

"When Little Sword was about five feet in length he carried a weapon on his snout not far from a foot long. By this time he was a great rover, hunting in the deep seas or the inshore tides as the whim of the chase might lead him, and always spoiling for a fight. He would jab his sword into the belly of a twenty-foot grampus just to relieve his feelings, and be off again before the outraged monster, bleeding through his six inches of blubber, had time to even make a pretense of charging him. And he was already a terror to the seals, who, for all their speed and dexterity, could neither catch him nor escape him.

"But he was getting a little careless. And one day, as he was sleeping, or basking, some ten feet below the surface, the broad, dark form of a sawfish arose beneath him and thrust at him with his dreadful saw. The pleasant idea of the sawfish was to rip up the sleeper's silver belly. But Little Sword awoke in time to just escape the horrid attack. He swept off in a short circle, came back with a lightning rush, and drove his sword full length into the stealthy enemy's shoulder just behind the gills. The great sawfish, heavy muscled and slow of movement, made no attempt to defend himself, but plunged suddenly downward into the gloomy depths where he loved to lie in wait. After relieving his indignation by a couple more vicious thrusts. Little Sword realized that he was too small to accomplish anything against this sneaking and prowling bulk, and shot off to look for a less dangerous basking place.

"It was soon after this close shave with the sawfish that Little Sword came once more across the path of the Inkmaker. He—"

But the Babe could contain himself no longer. He had been bursting with questions for the last ten minutes, and had heroically restrained himself. But this was too much for him.

"Why, Uncle Andy," he cried. "I thought the Inkmaker was dead. I thought the barracouta had eaten him up, feelers and eyes and all."

"Oh, you're a lot too particular!" grumbled Uncle Andy. "This was another Inkmaker, of course. And a very much bigger and more dangerous one, moreover, as you'll see presently. It was little he had to fear from the barracoutas. In fact, he had just fixed one of his longer tentacles on a vigorous four-foot barracouta, and was slowly drawing him down within reach of the rest of the feelers, when Little Sword's shining eyes alighted upon the struggle.

"This particular Inkmaker was crouching in a sort of shallow basin between rocks which were densely fringed with bright-striped weeds, starry madrepores, and sea-anemones of every lovely color. Disturbed by the struggle, however, the madrepores and anemones were nervously closing up their living blooms. The Inkmaker, who always managed somehow to have his own colors match his surroundings, so that his hideous form would not show too plainly and frighten his victims away, was now of a dirty pinkish-yellow, blotched and striped with purplish-brown; and his tentacles were like a bunch of striped snakes. Only his eyes never changed. They lay unwinking, two huge round lenses of terrible and intense blackness, staring upwards from the base of the writhing tentacles."

The Babe shuddered again, and wished that the beautiful swordfish would swim away as quickly as possible from the slimy horror. But he refrained interrupting. It would be dreadful if Uncle Andy should get annoyed and stop at this critical point!

"When Little Sword saw those long feelers dragging the barracouta down," went on Uncle Andy, after relighting his pipe, "he darted forward like a blue flame and jabbed his sword right through the nearest one."

"Oh, ho!" cried the Babe, forgetting caution. "He remembered how the barracouta had saved him!"

"Not much!" grunted Uncle Andy. "There's no sentiment about a swordfish, I can tell you. He'd have jabbed the barracouta, and eaten him, too, just as quick as look, but he hated the Inkmaker, and could not think of anything else. With a screwing backward pull he wrenched his sword out of the feeler, which seemed hardly to notice the wound. In the same instant another feeler snatched at him, for Mr. Inkmaker, you know, had ten tentacles, every one of them spoiling for a fight. It got only a slight hold, however, and Little Sword, whose strength was now something amazing, tore himself clear with a great livid, bleeding, burning patch on his side.

"And now, raging mad though he was, a gleam of sense flashed into his brain. He saw that it was not much use stabbing those tough tentacles. Lurching forward as if to stand on his head he shot straight downward, and drove his sword full length into one of those dreadful eyes.

"In an instant three or four feelers closed upon him. But they were now thrashing a little aimlessly, so that they did not work well together. The monster was confused by that terrible, searching trust. Little Sword was hampered by the feelers clutching at him, but he still had room to use his weapon. With all his weight and quivering strength he drove his sword again deep into the Inkmaker's head, twisting and wrenching it sideways as he drew it out. Other tentacles closed over him, but seemed to have lost their clutching power through the attack upon the source of their nervous energy. The struggling barracouta was drawn down with them, but blindly; and the water was now utterly black with the rank ink which the monster was pumping forth.

"For a few moments all was one boiling convulsion of fish and tentacles and ink, Little Sword simply stabbing and stabbing at the soft mass under his weapon. Then, all at once, the tentacles relaxed, falling away as slack as seaweed. The barracouta, nearly spent, swam off without even waiting to say 'Thank you.' And Little Sword coming to his senses as he realized his victory, rose slowly out of the area of the ink cloud. He knew that the Inkmaker's flesh was very good to eat, and he merely waited for the cloud to settle before making a meal which would completely satisfy his vengeance."

The Babe was thoughtful for a few moments after Uncle Andy stopped speaking. At length he said positively:

"I'm glad we don't have any Inkmakers, either, in the lake."

"Umph!" grunted Uncle Andy, "there are lots of things we don't have that we can very well do without."



CHAPTER V

ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP

Casting his flies across the eddying mouth of one of those cold streams which feed the crystal bosom of Silverwater, Uncle Andy had landed a magnificent pink-bellied trout—five pounds, if an ounce!

"Hi, but isn't he a whopper?" he cried exultantly, holding up his prize for the inspection of the Babe, who had been watching the struggle breathlessly.

"A—whopper?" repeated the Babe doubtfully. His idea of a whopper was something that objectionable little boys have been known to tell in order to get themselves out of a scrape. No full-fledged fisherman as yet, he did not see what it could have to do with a trout.

Uncle Andy seemed to divine his difficulty.

"I mean," he explained, "isn't he a big one? Tremendous?"

At this again the Babe looked doubtful. The fish was certainly a very beautiful one; but to the Babe's eyes it did not seem in any way remarkable for size. Yet he did not like to appear to disagree with Uncle Andy.

"Is it big?" he inquired politely. "Bill says there's some fish bigger than a house."

Uncle Andy looked at him askance.

"Seems to me," said he, "you're mighty hard to please to-day. And, anyhow, Bill talks nonsense. They're not fish, those monsters he was telling you about. They're whales."

"But they live in the water, don't they?" protested the Babe in surprise.

"Of course!" agreed Uncle Andy, wrapping his big trout up in wet grass and seating himself on a handy log for a smoke.

"Then why aren't they fish?" persisted the Babe, ever anxious to get to the root of a matter.

"Because they're not," replied Uncle Andy, impatient at having let himself in for explanations, which he always disliked. "They're animals, just as much as a dog or a muskrat."

The Babe wrinkled his forehead in perplexity. And Uncle Andy relented.

"You see," he continued, "they're not fish, because they cannot breathe under water like fish can, but have to come to the surface for air, just as we would have to. And they're not fish, because they nurse their babies as a cow or a cat does. And—and there are lots of other reasons."

"What are the other reasons?" demanded the Babe eagerly.

But Uncle Andy had felt himself getting into deep water. He adroitly evaded the question.

"Do you suppose this old trout here," said he, pointing to the grassy bundle, "used to love and take care of its little ones, like the whale I'm going to tell you about loved and took care of hers? No indeed! The trout had hundreds of thousands, and liked nothing better than to eat them whenever it got the chance. But the whale had only one—at a time, that is—and she always used to think there was nothing else like it in the world. There are lots of other mothers as foolish as that. Yours, for instance, now."

The Babe laughed. It pleased him when he understood one of Uncle Andy's jokes—which was not always, by any means. He squatted himself on the moss before the log, where he could stare straight up into Uncle Andy's face with his blue, steady, expectant eyes.

"It was a long way off from Silverwater," began Uncle Andy in a far-away voice, and with a far-away look in his eyes, "that the whale calf was born. It was up North, where the summer sun swung low over a world of cold green seas, low grey shores, crumbling white ice-fields, and floating mountains of ice that flashed with lovely, fairy-like tints of palest blue and amethyst. The calf himself, with his slippery greyish-black back and under-parts of a dirty cream color, was not beautiful—though, of course, his mother thought him so, as he lay nursing just under her great fin, rocked gently by the long, slow Arctic swells."

"What's Arctic swells?" interrupted the Babe, wrinkling his forehead more than ever. He had a vision of tall, smart-looking Eskimos, in wonderful furs; and it seemed to him very curious that the old mother whale should be so tame as to let them come close enough to rock her baby for her.

"Rollers, I mean; Big waves!" grunted Uncle Andy discontentedly. "A fellow has to be so extraordinarily literal with you to-day! Now, if you interrupt again, I'll stop, and you can get Bill to tell you all about it. As I was going to say, he—the calf, not Bill—was about eight or nine feet long. He looked all head. And his head looked all mouth. And his mouth—but you could not see into that for it was very busy nursing. His mother, however, lay with her mouth half open, a vast cavern of a mouth, nearly a third the length of her body—and it looked all whalebone. For, you must know, she was of the ancient and honorable family of the Right Whales, who scorn to grow any teeth, and therefore must live on soup so to speak."

Here he paused, and looked at the Babe as much as to say, "Now, I suppose you're going to interrupt again, in spite of all I've said." But the Babe, restraining his curiosity about the soup, only sat staring at him with solemn eyes. So he went on.

"You see, it was a most convenient kind of soup, a live soup, that they fed upon. The sea, in great spots and patches, is full of tiny creatures, sometimes jelly-fish, sometimes little squid of various kinds, all traveling in countless hosts from somewhere-or-other to somewhere else, they know not why. As the great mother whale lay there with her mouth open, these swarming little swimmers would calmly swim into it, never dreaming that it was a mouth. There they would get tangled among those long narrow strips or plates of whale-bone, with their fringed edges. Every little while the whale would lazily close her mouth, thrust forward her enormous fat tongue, and force the water out through this whalebone sieve of hers. It was like draining a dish of string beans through a colander. Having swallowed the mess of jellyfish and squid, she would open her mouth again, and wait for another lot to come in. It was a very easy and comfortable way to get a bite of breakfast, while waiting for her baby to finish nursing. And every little while, from the big blowhole or nostril on top of her head she would 'spout,' or send up a spray-like jet of steamy breath. And every little while, too, the big-headed baby under her flipper would send up a baby spout, as if in imitation of his mother.

"You must not think, however, that this lazy way of feeding was enough to keep the vast frame of the mother whale (she was quite sixty feet long: three times as long as Bill's shanty yonder) supplied with food. This was just nibbling. When she felt that her baby had nursed enough, she gave it a signal which it understood. It fell a little back along her huge side. Then, lifting her enormous tail straight in the air, she dived slowly downward into the pale, greenish glimmer of the deeper tide, the calf keeping his place cleverly behind her protecting flipper.

"Down here the minute life of the ocean waters swarmed more densely than at the surface. Swimming slowly, the mother whale filled her mouth again and again with the tiny darting squid, till she had strained out and swallowed perhaps a ton of the pulpy provender. As they felt the whalebone strainers closing about them, each one took alarm and let fly a jet of inky fluid, as if thinking to hide itself from Fate; and the dim green of the surrounding water grew clouded till the calf could hardly see, and had to crowd close to his mother's side. A twist or two of her mighty flukes, like the screw of an ocean liner, drove her clear of this obscurity, and carried her, a moment later, into a packed shoal of southward journeying capelin."

The Babe's mouth opened for the natural question: "What's capelin?"

But Uncle Andy got ahead of him.

"That's a little fish something like a sardine," he explained hastily. "And they travel in such countless numbers that sometimes a storm will throw them ashore in long windrows like you see in a hay field, so that the farmers come and cart them away for manure. Well, it did not take long for the old whale to fill up even her great stomach, when the capelin were so numerous. She went ploughing through the shoal lazily, and stopped at last to rub her little one softly with her flipper.

"All at once she caught sight of a curious-looking creature swimming just beneath the shoal of capelin, and every now and then opening its mouth to gulp down a bushel or so of them. It was about fifteen feet long, of a ghastly grayish white color, and from its snout stood straight out a sharp, twisted horn perhaps six feet in length. It was only a stupid narwhal, with no desire in the world to offend his gigantic neighbor: but she was nervous at the sight of his horn, which made her think of her dreaded enemy the swordfish. Tucking her baby well under her fin, she made an hysterical rush at the unoffending stranger. His little pig-like eyes blinked anxiously, and, darting off at his best pace, he was speedily lost to view in the cloudy myriads of the capelin.

"Having now been under water for some twelve or fifteen minutes, the mother whale knew that it was time for her baby to breathe again—though she herself could have held on without fresh air for another five or even ten minutes without much trouble."

The Babe gasped. It was like a bad dream to him, the idea of going along without a breath.

"Oh, how it must hurt!" he burst forth. "I should think it would kill them."

"It would kill you, of course, in about two minutes," replied Uncle Andy. "But they are built differently. They have a handy way of doing up a lot of breathing all at once, and then not having to think any more about it for a while. You can readily see what a convenience that might be to them.

"When they got back to the surface, they lay comfortably rocking among the green swells, while they both blew all the used-up air and steam out of their lungs. The feathery little jet of the calf rose gravely beside his mother's high and graceful spout. The calf, always hungry, because he had such a lot of growing to do and was in such a hurry to do it, fell at once to nursing again, while the mother lay basking half asleep. Overhead, some great white gulls flapped and screamed against the sharp blue, now and then dropping with a splash to snatch some fish from the transparent slope of a wave. A couple of hundred yards away three seals lay basking on an ice-floe, and in the distance could be seen other whales spouting. So the mother knew that she and her baby were not alone in these wide bright spaces of sea and sky.

"As a general rule, the great whale was apt to stay not more than two or three minutes at the surface, but to spend most of her time in the moderate depths. Now, however, with her big baby to nurse, she would often linger basking at the surface till her appetite drove her to activity. In general, also, she was apt to be rather careless about keeping watch against her enemies. But now she was vigilant even when she seemed asleep, and anything the least bit out of the ordinary was enough to make her take alarm. As she lay sluggishly rocking, the great blackish round of her head and back now all awash, now rising like a reef above the waves, she suddenly caught sight of a white furry head with a black tip to its nose, swiftly cleaving the water. She knew it was only a white bear swimming, and she knew also that it was not big enough to dare attack her calf. But with her foolish mother fears she objected to its even being in the neighborhood. She swept her dark bulk around so as to hide the little one from the white swimmer's eyes, and lay glaring at him with suspicious fury. The bear, however, hardly condescended to glance at her. He was after those basking seals on the ice-floes. Presently he dived, a long, long dive, and came up suddenly at the very edge of the ice, caught the nearest seal by the throat just as they were all hurling themselves into the water.

"To this unhappy affair the old whale did not give so much as a second look. So long as the bear kept a respectful distance from her precious baby she didn't care how many silly seals he killed.

"But presently she observed, far away among her spouting kindred, the black, slow-moving shape of a steam whaler. In some past experience she had learned that these strange creatures, which seemed to have other creatures, very small, but very, very dangerous, inside of them, were the most to be dreaded of all the whale's enemies. It was at present too far off for her to take alarm, but she lay watching the incomprehensible monster so sharply that she almost forgot to blow. Presently she saw it crawl up quite close to the unsuspecting shape of one of her kinsmen. A spiteful flame leapt from its head. Then a sharp thunder came rapping across the waves, and she saw her giant kinsman hurl himself clear into the air. He fell back with a terrific splash, which set the monster rolling, and, for perhaps a minute, his struggles lashed the sea into foam. Then he lay still, and soon she saw him drawn slowly up till he clung close to the monster's side. This unheard-of action filled her with a terror that was quite sickening. Clutching her calf tremblingly under her fin she plunged once more into the deep, and, traveling as fast as possible for the little one, at a depth of perhaps two hundred feet, she headed for another feeding ground where she trusted that the monster might not follow.

"When she came again to the surface, fifteen minutes later, the monster and all her spouting kinsfolk were out of sight, hidden behind a mile-long mountain of blue ice-berg. But she was not satisfied. Remaining up less than two minutes, to give the calf time for breath, she hurriedly plunged again and continued her journey. When this manoeuver had been repeated half a dozen times she began to feel more at ease. At last she came to a halt, and lay rocking in the seas just off the mouth of a spacious rock-rimmed bay.

"Here, as luck would have it, she found herself in the midst of the food which she loved best. The leaden green of the swells was all flushed and stained with pale pink. This unusual color was caused by hordes of tiny, shrimplike creatures—distant cousins of those which you like so well in a salad. The whale preferred them in the form of soup, so she went sailing slowly through them with her cavernous mouth very wide open. Every now and then she would shut her jaws and give two or three great gulps, and her little eyes, away back at the base of her skull, would almost twinkle with satisfaction.

"But, as it appeared, she was not the only one that liked shrimps. The air was full of wings and screams, where gulls, gannets, and skuas swooped and splashed, quarrelling because they got in one another's way at the feast. Also, here and there a heavy, sucking swirl on the smooth slope of a wave would show where some very big fish was taking toll of the pinky swarms. The whale kept her eye on these ponderous swirls with a certain amount of suspicion, though not really anticipating any danger here.

"She was just about coming to the conclusion that one can have enough, even of shrimps, when, glancing downwards, she caught sight of a long, slender, deadly-looking shape slanting up toward her through a space of clear water between the armies of the shrimps. She knew that grim shape all too well, and it was darting straight at her baby, its terrible sword standing out keen and straight from its pointed snout.

"In spite of her immense bulk and apparently clumsy form, the whale was capable of marvelously quick action. You see, except for her head she was all one bundle of muscle. Swift as thought, she whipped herself clear round, between her calf and the upward rush of the swordfish. She was just in time. The thrust that would have gone clean through the calf, splitting its heart in two, went deep into her own side.

"Withdrawing his terrible weapon, the robber fish whirled about like lightning and made a second dash at the coveted prize. But the mother, holding the little one tight under her flipper, wheeled again in time to intercept the attack, and again received the dreadful thrust in her own flank. So swift was the swordfish (he was a kind of giant mackerel, with all the mackerel's grace and fire and nimbleness) that he seemed to be everywhere at once. The whale was kept spinning around in a dizzy circle of foam, like a whirlpool, with the bewildered calf on the inside. The mighty twisting thrusts of her tail, with its flukes twenty feet wide, set the whole surface boiling for hundreds of yards about.

"At last, grown suddenly frantic with rage, with terror for her little one, and with the pain of her wounds, the tormented mother broke into a deep booming bellow, as of a hundred bulls. The mysterious sound sent all the gulls screaming into the air, and frightened the basking walruses on the ledges three miles away. Every seal that heard it shuddered and dived, and an old white bear, prowling along the desolate beach in search of dead fish, lifted his lean head and listened nervously.

"Only the swordfish paid no attention to that tremendous and desperate cry. In the midst of it he made another rush, missed the calf by a handbreadth, and buried his sword to the socket in the mother's side.

"At this the old whale seemed to lose her wits. Still clutching the terrified calf under one flipper, she stood straight on her head, so that the head and half her body were below the surface, and fell to lashing the water all around her with ponderous, deafening blows of her tail. The huge concussions drove the swordfish from the surface, and for a minute or two he swam around her in a wide circle, about twenty feet down, trying to get the hang of these queer tactics. Then, swift and smooth as a shadow, he shot in diagonally, well below the range of those crashing strokes. His sword went clean through the body of the calf, through its heart, killing it instantly, and at the same time forcing it from its mother's hold. The lifeless but still quivering form fixed thus firmly on his sword, he darted away with it, and was instantly lost to view beyond the dense, churned hosts of the pink shrimps.

"For perhaps a minute the mother, as if bewildered by the violence of her own exertions, seemed quite unaware of what had happened. At length she stopped lashing the water, came slowly to the surface stared about her in a dazed way, and once more bellowed forth her terrible booming cry. Once more the seabirds sprang terrified to the upper air, and the old white bear on the far-off shore lifted his head once more to listen nervously."

"And she never saw her baby any more," murmured the Babe mournfully.

Uncle Andy snorted, disdaining to answer such a remark.

"Oh, I wish somebody would do something to that swordfish," continued the Babe. And he wiped a tear from his nose.



CHAPTER VI

TEDDY BEAR'S BEE TREE

They were exploring the high slopes of the farther shore of Silverwater. It had been an unusually long trip for the Babe's short legs, and Uncle Andy had considerately called a halt, on the pretext that it was time for a smoke. He knew that the Babe would trudge on till he dropped in his tracks before acknowledging that he was tired. A mossy boulder under the ethereal green shade of a silver birch offered the kind of resting place—comfortable yet unkempt—which appealed to Uncle Andy's taste; and there below, over a succession of three low, wooded ridges, lay outspread the enchanting mirror of the lake. Uncle Andy's pipe never tasted so good to him as when he could smoke it to the accompaniment of a wide and eye-filling view.

The Babe, who had squatted himself cross-legged on the turf at the foot of the boulder, would have appreciated that superb view also, but that his eager eyes had detected a pair of brown rabbits peering out at him inquiringly from the fringes of a thicket of young firs.

"Perhaps," he thought to himself, "if we keep very still indeed, they'll come out and play."

He was about to whisper this suggestion cautiously to Uncle Andy, when, from somewhere in the trees behind them, came a loud sound of scrambling, of claws scratching on bark, followed by a thud, a grunt, and a whining, and then the crash of some heavy creature careering through the underbrush. It paused within twenty or thirty paces of them in its noisy flight, but the bushes were so thick that they could not catch a glimpse of it.

The rabbits vanished. The Babe, startled, shrank closer to his uncle's knee, and stared up at him with round eyes of inquiry.

"He's in a hurry, all right, and doesn't care who knows it!" chuckled Uncle Andy. But his shaggy brows were knit in some perplexity.

"Who's he?" demanded the Babe.

"Well, now," protested Uncle Andy, as much as to say that the Babe ought to have known that without asking, "you know there's nothing in these woods big enough to make such a noise as that except a bear or a moose. And a moose can't go up a tree. You heard that fellow fall down out of a tree, didn't you?"

"Why did he fall down out of the tree?" asked the Babe, in a tone of great surprise.

"That's just what I—" began Uncle Andy. But he was interrupted.

"Oh! Oh! It's stung me!" cried the Babe shrilly, jumping to his feet and slapping at his ear. His eyes filled with injured tears.

Uncle Andy stared at him for a moment in grave reproof. Then he, too, sprang up as if the boulder had suddenly grown red-hot, and pawed at his hair with both hands, dropping his pipe.

"Gee! I see why he fell down!" he cried. The Babe gave another cry, clapped his hand to his leg where the stocking did not quite join the short breeches, and began hopping up and down on one foot. A heavy, pervasive hum was beginning to make itself heard.

"Come!" yelled Uncle Andy, striking at his cheek angrily and ducking his head as if he were going to butt something. He grabbed the Babe by one arm and rushed him to the fir thicket where the rabbits had been.

"Duck!" he ordered. "Down with you—flat!" And together they crawled into the low-growing, dense-foliaged thicket, where they lay side by side, face downwards.

"They won't follow us in here," murmured Uncle Andy. "They don't like thick bushes."

"But I'm afraid—we've brought some in with us, Uncle Andy," replied the Babe, trying very hard to keep the tears out of his voice. "I think I hear one squealing and buzzing in my hair. Oh!" And he clutched wildly at his leg.

"You're right!" said Uncle Andy, his voice suddenly growing very stern as a bee crawled over his collar and jabbed him with great earnestness in the neck. He sat up. Several other bees were creeping over him, seeking an effective spot to administer their fiery admonitions. But he paid them no heed. They stung him where they would—while he was quickly looking over the Babe's hair, jacket, sleeves, stockings, and loose little trousers. He killed half a dozen of the angry crawlers before they found a chance to do the Babe more damage. Then he pulled out three stings, and applied moist earth from under the moss to each red and anguished spot.

The Babe looked up at him with a resolute little laugh, and shook obstinately from the tip of his nose the tears which he would not acknowledge by the attentions of his handkerchief or his fist.

"Thank you awfully," he began politely. "But oh! Uncle Andy, your poor eye is just dreadful. Oh-h-h!"

"Yes, they have been getting after me a bit," agreed Uncle Andy, dealing firmly with his own assailants, now that the Babe was all right. "But this jab under the eye is the only one that matters. Here, see if you can get hold of the sting."

The Babe's keen eyes and nimble little fingers captured it at once. Then Uncle Andy plastered the spot with a daub of wet, black earth, and peered over it solemnly at the Babe's swollen ear. He straightened his grizzled hair, and tried to look as if nothing out of the way had happened.

"I wish I'd brought my pipe along," he muttered. "It's over there by the rock. But I reckon it wouldn't be healthy for me to go and get it just yet!"

"What's made them so awful mad, do you suppose?" inquired the Babe, nursing his wounds and listening uneasily to the vicious hum which filled the air outside the thicket.

"It's that fool bear!" replied Uncle Andy. "He's struck a bee tree too tough for him to tear open, and he fooled at it just long enough to get the bees good and savage. Then he quit in a hurry. And we'll just have to stay here till the bees get cooled down."

"How long'll that be?" inquired the Babe dismally. It was hard to sit still in the hot fir thicket, with that burning, throbbing smart in his ear and two little points of fierce ache in his leg. Uncle Andy was far from happy himself; but he felt that the Babe, who had behaved very well, must have his mind diverted. He fished out a letter from his pocket, rolled himself, with his heavy pipe tobacco, a cigarette as thick as his finger, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked irrelevantly but consolingly:

"It isn't always, by any means, that the bees get the best of it this way. Mostly it's the other way about. This bear was a fool. But there was Teddy Bear, now, a cub over the foothills of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and he was not a fool. When he tackled his first bee tree—and he was nothing but a cub, mind you—he pulled off the affair in good shape. I wish it had been these bees that he cleaned out."

The Babe was so surprised that he let go of his leg for a moment.

"Why?" he exclaimed, "how could a cub do what a big, strong, grown-up bear couldn't manage?" He thought with a shudder how unequal he would be to such an undertaking.

"You just wait and see!" admonished Uncle Andy, blowing furious clouds from his monstrous cigarette. "It was about the end of the blue-berry season when Teddy Bear lost his big, rusty-coated mother and small, glossy black sister, and found himself completely alone in the world. They had all three come down together from the high blue-berry patches to the dark swamps to hunt for roots and fungi as a variation to their fruit diet. The mother and sister had got caught together in a deadfall—a dreadful trap which crushed them both flat in an instant. Teddy Bear, some ten feet out of danger, had stared for two seconds in frozen horror, and then raced away like mad with his mother's warning screech hoarse in his ears. He knew by instinct that he would never see the victims any more; and he was very unhappy and lonely. For a whole day he moped, roaming restlessly about the high slopes and refusing to eat, till at last he got so hungry that he just had to eat. Then he began to forget his grief a little, and devoted himself to the business of finding a living. But from being the most sunny-tempered of cubs he became all at once as peppery as could be.

"As I have told you," continued Uncle Andy, peering at him with strange solemnity over the mud patch beneath his swollen eye, "the blue-berries were just about done. And as Teddy would not go down to the lower lands again to hunt for other kinds of rations, he had to do a lot of hustling to find enough blue-berries for his healthy young appetite. Thus it came about that when one day, on an out-of-the-way corner of the mountain, he stumbled upon a patch of belated berries—large, plump, lapis-blue, and juicy—he fairly forgot himself in his greedy excitement. He whimpered, he grunted, he wallowed as he fed. He had no time to look where he was going. So, all of a sudden, he fell straight through a thick fringe of blue-berry bushes and went sprawling and clawing down the face of an almost perpendicular steep.

"The distance of his fall was not far short of thirty feet, and he brought up with a bump which left him not breath enough to squeal. The ground was soft, however, with undergrowth and debris, and he had no bones broken. In a couple of minutes he was busy licking himself all over to make sure he was undamaged. Reassured on this point, he went prowling in exploration of the place he had dropped into.

"It was a sort of deep bowl, not more than forty feet across at the bottom, and with its rocky sides so steep that Teddy Bear did not feel at all encouraged to climb them. He went sniffing and peering around the edges in the hope of finding some easier way of escape. Disappointed in this, he lifted his black, alert little nose, and stared longingly upwards, as if contemplating an effort to fly.

"He saw no help in that direction; but his nostrils caught a savor which for the moment put all thought of escape out of his head. It was the warm, delectable smell of honey. Teddy Bear had never tasted honey; but he needed no one to tell him it was good. Instantly he knew that he was very hungry. And instead of wanting to find a way out of the hole, all he wanted was to find out where that wonderful smell came from. If he thought any more at all of the hole, it was only to be glad he had had the great luck to fall into it.

"From the deep soil at the bottom of the hole grew three big trees, together with a certain amount of underbrush. Two of those were fir trees, green and flourishing. The third was an old maple, with several of its branches broken away. It was quite dead all down one side, while on the other only a couple of branches put forth leaves. About a small hole near the top of this dilapidated old tree Teddy Bear caught sight of a lot of bees, coming and going. Then he knew where that adorable smell came from. For though, as I think I have said, his experience was extremely limited, his mother had managed to convey to him an astonishing lot of useful and varied information.

"Teddy Bear had an idea that bees, in spite of their altogether diminutive size, were capable of making themselves unpleasant, and also that they had a temper which was liable to go off at half-cock. Nevertheless, being a bear of great decision, he lost no time in wondering what he had better do. The moment he had convinced himself that the honey was up that tree, up that tree he went to get it."

"Oh!" cried the Babe, in tones of shuddering sympathy, as he felt at his leg and his ear. "Oh! why didn't he stop to think?"

Uncle Andy did not seem to consider that this remark called for any reply. He ignored it. Stopping just at this critical point he proceeded with exasperating deliberation to roll himself another fat and clumsy cigarette. Then he applied fresh earth to both the Babe's stings and his own. At last he went on.

"That tree must have been hollow a long way down, for almost as soon as Teddy Bear's claws began to rattle on the bark the bees suspected trouble and began to get excited. When he was not much more than halfway up, and hanging to the rough bark with all his claws, biff!—something sharp and very hot struck him in the nose. He grunted, and almost let go in his surprise. Naturally, he wanted to paw his nose—for you know how it smarted!"

"I guess so!" murmured the Babe in deepest sympathy, stroking the patch of mud on his ear.

"But that cub had naturally a level head. He knew that if he let go with even one paw he would fall to the ground, because the trunk of the tree at that point was so big he could not get a good hold upon it. So he just dug his smarting nose into the bark and clawed himself around to the other side of the tree, where the branches that were still green sheltered him a bit, and there was a thick shadow from the nearest fir tree, whose boughs interwove with those of the maple. Here the bees didn't seem to notice him. He kept very still, listening to their angry buzz till it had somewhat quieted down. Then, instead of going about it with a noisy dash, as he had done before, he worked his way up stealthily and slowly till he could crawl into the crotch of the first branch. You see, that bear could learn a lesson.

"Presently he stuck his nose around to see how near he was to the bees' hole. He had just time to locate it—about seven or eight feet above him—when again biff! And he was stung on the lip. He drew in his head again quick, I can tell you—quick enough to catch that bee and smash it. He ate it, indignantly. And then he lay curled up in the crotch for some minutes, gently pawing his sore little snout and whimpering angrily.

"The warm, sweet smell of the honey was very strong up there. And, moreover, Teddy Bear's temper was now thoroughly aroused. Most cubs, and some older bears, would have relinquished the adventure at this point, for, as a rule, it takes a wise old bear to handle a bee tree successfully. But Teddy Bear was no ordinary cub, let me tell you. He lay nursing his anger and his nose till he had made up his mind what to do. And then he set out to do it.

"Hauling himself up softly from branch to branch, he made no more noise than a shadow. As soon as he was right behind the bees' hole he reached around, dug his claws into the edge of it, and pulled with all his might. The edges were rotten, and a pawful of old wood came. So did the bees!

"They were onto him in a second. He grunted furiously, screwed his eyes up tight, tucked his muzzle down under his left arm—which was busy holding on—and reached around blindly for another pull. This time he got a good grip, and he could feel something give. But the fiery torture was too much for him. He drew in his paw, crouched back into the crotch, and cuffed wildly at his own ears and face as well as at the air, now thick with his assailants. The terrific hum they made somewhat daunted him. For a few seconds he stood his ground, battling frantically. Then, with an agility that you would never have dreamed his chubby form to be capable of, he went swinging down from branch to branch, whining and coughing and spluttering and squealing all the way. From the lowest branch he slid down the trunk, his claws tearing the bark and just clinging enough to break his fall.

"Reaching the ground, he began to roll himself over and over in the dry leaves and twigs till he had crushed out all the bees that clung in his fur."

"But why didn't the rest of the bees follow him? They followed this other bear to-day!" protested the Babe feelingly.

"Well, they didn't!" returned Uncle Andy quite shortly, with his customary objection to being interrupted. Then he thought better of it, and added amiably: "That's a sensible question—a very natural question; and I'll give you the answer to it in half a minute. I've got to tell you my yarn in my own way, you know—you ought to know it by this time—but you'll see presently just why the bees acted so differently in the two cases.

"Well, as soon as Teddy Bear had got rid of his assailants he clawed down through the leaves and twigs and moss—like I did just now, you remember, till he came to the damp, cool earth. Ah, how he dug his smarting muzzle into it, and rooted in it, and rubbed it into his ears and on his eyelids! till pretty soon—for the bee stings do not poison a bear's blood as strongly as they poison us—he began to feel much easier. As for the rest of his body—well, those stings didn't amount to much, you know, because his fur and his hide were both so thick.

"At last he sat up on his haunches and looked around. You should have seen him!"

"I'm glad I wasn't there, Uncle Andy," said the Babe, earnestly shaking his head. But Uncle Andy paid no attention to the remark.

"His muddy paws drooped over his breast, and his face was all stuck over with leaves and moss and mud—"

"We must look funny, too," suggested the Babe, staring hard at the black mud poultice under his uncle's swollen eye. But his uncle refused to be diverted.

"And his glossy fur was in a state of which his mother would have strongly disapproved. But his twinkling little eyes burned with wrath and determination. He sniffed again that honey smell. He stared up at the bee tree, and noted that the opening was much larger than it had been before his visit. A big crack extended from it for nearly two feet down the trunk. Moreover, there did not seem to be so many bees buzzing about the hole."

The Babe's eyes grew so round with inquiry at this point that Uncle Andy felt bound to explain.

"You see, as soon as the bees got it into their cunning heads that their enemy was going to succeed in breaking into their storehouse, they decided that it was more important to save their treasures than to fight the enemy. It's like when one's house is on fire. At first one fights to put the fire out. When that's no use, then one thinks only of saving the things. That's the principle the bees generally go upon. At first they attack the enemy, in the hope of driving him off. But if they find that he is going to succeed in breaking in and burglarizing the place, then they fling themselves on the precious honey which they have taken so much pains to store, and begin to stuff their honey sacks as full as possible. All they think of then is to carry away enough to keep them going while they are getting established in new quarters. The trouble with the fool bear who has got us into this mess to-day was that he tackled a bee tree where the outside wood was too strong for him to rip open. The bees knew he couldn't get in at them, so they all turned out after him, to give him a good lesson. When he got away through the underbrush so quickly they just turned on us, because they felt they must give a lesson to somebody."

"We didn't want to steal their old honey," muttered the Babe in an injured voice.

"Oh, I'm not so sure!" said Uncle Andy. "I shouldn't wonder if Bill and I'd come over here some night and smoke the rascals out. But we can wait. That's the difference between us and Teddy Bear. He wouldn't even wait to clean the leaves off his face, he was so anxious for that honey, and his revenge.

"This time he went up the tree slowly and quietly, keeping out of sight all the way. When he was exactly on a level with the entrance he braced himself solidly, reached his right paw around the trunk like lightning, got a fine hold on the edge of the new crack, and wrenched with all his might.

"A big strip of half-rotten wood came away so suddenly that Teddy Bear nearly fell out of the tree.

"A lot of bees came with it; and once more Teddy Bear's head was in a swarm of little darting, piercing flames. But his blood was up. He held onto that chunk of bee tree. A big piece of comb, dripping with honey and crawling with bees, was sticking to it. Whimpering and pawing at his face, he crunched a great mouthful of the comb, bees and all.

"Never had he tasted, never had he dreamed of, anything so delicious! What was the pain of his smarting muzzle to that ecstatic mouthful? He snatched another, which took all the rest of the comb. Then he flung the piece of wood to the ground.

"The bees, meanwhile—except those which had stung him and were now crawling, stingless and soon to die, in his fur—had suddenly left him. The whole interior of their hive was exposed to the glare of daylight, and their one thought now was to save all they could. Teddy Bear's one thought was to seize all he could. He clawed himself around boldly to the front of the tree, plunged one greedy paw straight into the heart of the hive, snatched forth a big, dripping, crawling comb, and fell to munching it up as fast as possible—honey, bees, brood-comb, bee-bread, all together indiscriminately. The distracted bees paid him no more attention. They were too busy filling their honey sacks."

The Babe smacked his lips. He was beginning to get pretty hungry himself.

"Well," continued Uncle Andy, "Teddy Bear chewed and chewed, finally plunging his whole head into the sticky mess—getting a few stings, of course, but never thinking of them—till he was just so gorged that he couldn't hold another morsel. Then, very slowly and heavily, grunting all the time, he climbed down the bee tree. He felt that he wanted to go to sleep. When he reached the bottom he sat up on his haunches to look around for some sort of a snug corner. His eyelids were swollen with stings, but his little round stomach was swollen with honey, so he didn't care a cent. His face was all daubed with honey, and earth, and leaves, and dead bees. His whole body was a sight. And his claws were so stuck up with honey and rotten wood and bark that he kept opening and shutting them like a baby who has got a feather stuck to its fingers and doesn't know what to do with it, But he was too sleepy to bother about his appearance. He just waddled over to a sort of nook between the roots of the next tree, curled up with his sticky nose between his sticky paws, and was soon snoring."

"And did he ever get out of that deep hole?" inquired the Babe, always impatient of the abrupt way in which Uncle Andy was wont to end his stories.

"Of course he got out. He climbed out," answered Uncle Andy. "Do you suppose a bear like that could be kept shut up long? And now I think we might be getting out, too! I don't hear any more humming outside, so I reckon the coast's about clear."

He peered forth cautiously.

"It's all right. Come along," he said. "And there's my pipe at the foot of the rock, just where I dropped it," he added, in a tone of great satisfaction. Then, with mud-patched, swollen faces, and crooked but cheerful smiles, the two refugees emerged into the golden light of the afternoon, and stretched themselves. But, as Uncle Andy surveyed first the Babe and then himself in the unobstructed light, his smile faded.

"I'm afraid Bill's going to have the laugh on us when we get home!" said he.



CHAPTER VII

THE SNOWHOUSE BABY

There had been a film of glass-clear ice that morning all round the shores of Silverwater. It had melted as the sun climbed high into the bland October blue; but in the air remained, even at midday, a crispness, a tang, which set the Child's blood tingling. He drew the spicy breath of the spruce forests as deep as possible into his little lungs, and outraged the solemn silences with shouts and squeals of sheer ecstasy, which Uncle Andy had not the heart to suppress. Then, all at once, he remembered what the thrilling air, the gold and scarlet of the trees, the fairy ice films, the whirr of the partridge wings, and the sharp cries of the bluejays all meant. It meant that soon Uncle Andy would take him back to town, the cabin under the hemlock would be boarded up. Bill the Guide would go off to the lumber camps beyond the Ottanoonsis, and Silverwater would be left to the snow and the solitude of winter. His heart tightened with homesickness. Yet, after all, he reflected, during the months of cold his beloved Silverwater would be none too friendly a place, especially to such of the little furred and feathered folk as were bold enough to linger about its shores. He shivered as he thought of the difference winter must make to all the children of the wild.

"Why so solemn all of a sudden?" asked Uncle Andy, eyeing him suspiciously. "I thought a minute ago you'd take the whole roof off the forest an' scare the old bull moose across the lake into shedding his new antlers."

"I was just thinking," answered the Child.

"And does it hurt?" inquired Uncle Andy politely.

But, young as he was, the Child had learned to ignore sarcasm—especially Uncle Andy's, which he seldom understood.

"I was just wondering," he replied, shaking his head thoughtfully, "what the young ones of all the wild creatures would do in the winter to keep warm. Bill says they all go to sleep. But I don't see how that keeps them warm, Uncle Andy."

"Oh, Bill!" remarked Uncle Andy, in a tone which stripped all Bill's statements of the last shreds of authority. "But, as a matter of fact, there aren't many youngsters around in the woods in winter—not enough for you to be looking so solemn about. They're mostly born early enough in spring and summer to be pretty well grown up by the time winter comes on them."

"Gee!" murmured the Child enviously. "I wish I could get grown up as quick as that."

Uncle Andy sniffed.

"There are lots of people besides you," said he, "that don't know when they're well off. But," he continued, seating himself on Bill's chopping log and meditatively cleaning out his pipe bowl with a bit of chip, "there are some youngsters who have a fashion of getting themselves born right in the worst of the cold weather—and that not here in Silverwater neither, but way up north, where weather is weather, let me tell you—where it gets so cold that, if you were foolish enough to cry, the tears would all freeze instantly, till your eyes were shut up in a regular ice jam."

"I wouldn't cry," declared the Child.

"No? But I don't want you to interrupt me any more."

"Of course not," said the Child politely. Uncle Andy eyed him searchingly, and then decided to go on.

"Away up north," he began abruptly—and paused to light his pipe—"away up north, as I was saying, it was just midwinter. It was also midnight—which, in those latitudes, is another way of saying the same thing. The land as far as eye could see in every direction was flat, dead white, and smooth as a table, except for the long curving windrows into which the hard snow had been licked up by weeks of screaming wind. Just now the wind was still. The sky was like black steel sown with diamonds, and the stars seemed to snap under the terrific cold. Suddenly their bitter sparkle faded, and a delicate pale green glow spread itself, opening like a fan, till it covered half the heavens. Almost immediately the center of the base of the fan rolled itself up till the strange light became an arch of intense radiance, the green tint shifting rapidly to blue-white, violet, gold, and cherry rose. A moment more and the still arch broke up into an incalculable array of upright spears of light, pointing toward the zenith, and dancing swiftly from side to side with a thin, mysterious rustle. They danced so for some minutes, ever changing color, till suddenly they all melted back into the fan-shaped glow. And the glow remained, throbbing softly as if breathless, uncertain whether to die away or to go through the whole performance again."

"I know—" began the Child, but checked himself at once with a deprecating glance of apology.

"Except for the dancing wonder of the light," continued Uncle Andy, graciously pretending not to hear the interruption, "nothing stirred in all that emptiness of naked space. Of life there was not the least sign anywhere. This appeared the very home of death and intolerable cold. Yet at one spot, between two little, almost indistinguishable ridges of snow, might have been noticed a tiny wisp of vapor. If one had put his face down close to the snow, so that the vapor came between his eyes and the light, he would have made it out quite distinctly. And it would have certainly seemed very puzzling that anything like steam should be coming up out of that iron-bound expanse."

Now the Child had once seen, in the depth of winter, a wreath of mist arising from the snowy rim of an open spring, and for the life of him he could not hold his tongue.

"It was a boiling spring," he blurted out.

Uncle Andy gazed at him for some seconds in a disconcerting silence, till the Child felt himself no bigger than a minute.

"It was a bear," he announced at length coldly. Then he was silent again.

And the Child, mortified at having made such a bad guess, was silent too, in spite of his pangs of curiosity at this startling assertion.

"You see," went on Uncle Andy, after he was satisfied that the Child was not going to interrupt again, at least for the moment, "you see, under those two ridges of frozen snow there was a little cavern-like crevice in the rock. It was sheltered perfectly from those terrific winds which sometimes for days together would drive screaming over the levels. And in this crevice, at the first heavy snowfall, a big white bear had curled herself up to sleep.

"She had had a good hunting season, with plenty of seals and salmon to eat, and she was fat and comfortable. Though very drowsy, she did not go quite to sleep at once, but for several days, in a dreamy half-doze, she kept from time to time turning about and rearranging her bed. All the time the snow was piling down into the crevice, till at last it was level full and firmly packed. And in the meantime the old bear, in her sleepy turnings, had managed to make herself a sort of snowhouse—decidedly narrow, indeed, but wonderfully snug in its way. There was no room to take exercise, of course, but that, after all, was about the last thing she was thinking of. A day or two more and she was too fast asleep to do anything but breathe.

"The winter deepened, and storm after storm scourged the naked plain; and the snow fell endlessly, till the snowhouse was buried away fairly out of remembrance. The savage cold swept down noiselessly from outer space, till, if there had been any such things as thermometers up there, the mercury would have been frozen hard as steel and the thin spirit to a sticky, ropy syrup. But even such cold as that could not get down to the hidden snow-house where the old bear lay so sound asleep."

The Child wagged his head wistfully at the picture, and then cheered himself with the resolve to build just such a snowhouse in the back yard that winter—if only there should fall enough snow. But he managed to hold his tongue about it.

"Just about the middle of the winter," went on Uncle Andy, after a pause to see if the Child was going to interrupt him again, "the old bear began to stir a little. She grumbled, and whimpered, and seemed to be having uneasy dreams for a day or two. At last she half woke up—or perhaps a little more than half. Then a little furry cub was born to her. She was just about wide enough awake to tell him how glad she was to see him and have him with her, and to lick him tenderly for a while, and to get him nursing comfortably. When she had quite satisfied herself that he was a cub to do her credit, she dozed off to sleep again without any anxiety whatever. You see, there was not the least chance of his being stolen, or falling downstairs, or getting into any mischief whatever. And that was where she had a great advantage over lots of mothers whom we could, think of if we tried."

"But what made the steam, Uncle Andy?" broke in the Child, somewhat irrelevantly. He had a way, sometimes rather exasperating to the narrator, of never forgetting the loose ends in a narrative, and of calling attention to them at unexpected moments.

"Can't you see that for yourself?" grunted Uncle Andy impatiently. "It was breath. Try to think for yourself a little. Well, as I was trying to say, there was nothing much for the cub to do in the snowhouse but nurse, sleep, and grow. To these three important but not exciting affairs he devoted himself entirely. Neither to him nor to his big white mother did it matter in the least whether the long Arctic gales roared over their unseen roof, or the unimaginable Arctic cold groped for them with noiseless fingers. Neither foe could reach them in their warm refuge. Nothing at all, indeed, could find them, except, once in a while, when the Northern Lights were dancing with unusual brilliance across the sky, a dim, pallid glow, which would filter down through the snow and allow the cub's eyes (if they happened to be open at the time) to make out something of his mother's gigantic white form.

"For the youngster of so huge a mother, the snowhouse baby was quite absurdly small. But this defect, by sticking closely to his business, he remedied with amazing rapidity. In fact, if his mother had cared to stay awake long enough to watch, she could fairly have seen him grow. But, of course, this growth was all at his mother's expense, seeing that he had no food except her milk. So as he grew bigger and fatter, she grew thinner and lanker, till you would hardly have recognized this long, gaunt, white fur bag of bones for the plump beast of the previous autumn.

"But all passes—even an Arctic winter. The sun began to make short daily trips across the horizon. It got higher and higher, and hotter and hotter. The snow began to melt, crumble, shrink upon itself. Up to within a couple of hundred yards of the hidden snowhouse, what had seemed to be solid land broke up and revealed itself as open sea, crowded with huge ice cakes, and walrus, and seals. Sea birds came splashing and screaming. And a wonderful thrill awoke in the air.

"That thrill got down into the snowhouse—the roof of which was by this time getting much thinner. The cub found himself much less sleepy. He grew restless. He wanted to stretch his sturdy little legs to find out what they were good for. His mother, too, woke up. She found herself so hungry that there was no temptation to go to sleep again. Moreover, it was beginning to feel too warm for comfort—that is, for a polar bear's comfort, not for yours or mine—in the snowhouse. She got up and shook herself. One wall of the snowhouse very civilly gave way a bit, allowing her more room. But the roof, well supported by the rock, still held. The snowhouse was full of a beautiful pale-blue light.

"Just at this particular moment a little herd of walrus—two old bulls and four cows with their fat, oily-looking calves—came sprawling, floundering and grunting by. They were quite out of place on land, of course, but for some reason known only to themselves they were crossing over the narrow neck of low ground from another bay, half a mile away. Perhaps the ice pack had been jammed in by wind and current on that side, filling the shallow bay to the bottom and cutting the walrus off from their feeding grounds. If not that, then it was some other equally urgent reason, or the massive beasts, who can move on land only by a series of violent and exhausting flops, would never have undertaken an enterprise so formidable as a half-mile overland journey. They were accomplishing it, however, with a vast deal of groaning and wheezing and deep-throated grunting, when they arrived at the end of the crevice wherein the snowhouse baby and his mother were concealed.

"Lifting their huge, whiskered and tusked heads, and plunging forward laboriously on their awkward nippers, the two old bulls went by, followed by the ponderous cows with their lumpy, rolling calves. The hindermost cow, a few feet to the right of the herd, came so close to the end of the crevice that the edge of the snow gave way and her left nipper slipped into it, throwing her forward upon her side. As she struggled to recover herself, close beside her the snow was heaved up, and a terrible, grinning white head emerged, followed by gigantic shoulders and huge, claw-armed, battling paws.

"This sudden and dreadful apparition startled the walrus cow into new vigor, so that with a convulsive plunge she tore herself free of the pitfall. For a couple of seconds the old bear towered above her, with sagacious eyes taking in the whole situation. Then, judiciously ignoring the mother, she sprang over her, treading her down into the snow, fell upon the fat calf, and with one tremendous buffet broke its neck.

"With a hoarse roar of grief and fury the cow wheeled upon her haunches, reared her sprawling bulk aloft, and tried to throw herself upon the slayer. The bear nimbly avoided the shock, and whirled round to see where her cub was. Blinking at the light and dazed by the sudden uproar, but full of curiosity, he was just crawling up out of the ruins of the snowhouse. His mother dragged him forth by the scruff of the neck, and with a heave of one paw sent him rolling over and over along the snow, a dozen paces out of danger. At the same time something in her savage growls conveyed to him a first lesson in that wholesome fear which it is so well for the children of the wild to learn early. As he pulled himself together and picked himself up he was still full of curiosity, but at the same time he realized the absolute necessity for keeping out of the way of something, whatever it was.

"He soon saw what it was. At the cry of the bereaved mother the two great walrus bulls had turned. Now, with curious, choked roars, which seemed to tear their way with difficulty out of their deep chests, they came floundering back to the rescue. The cub, a sure instinct asserting itself at once, looked behind him to see that the path of escape was clear. Then he sat up on his haunches, his twinkling little eyes shifting back and forth between those mighty oncoming bulks and the long, gaunt, white form of his mother.

"For perhaps half a minute the old bear stood her ground, dodging the clumsy but terrific onslaughts of the cow, and dealing her two or three buffets which would have smashed in the skeleton of any creature less tough than a walrus or an elephant. But she had no notion of risking her health and the future of her baby by cultivating any more intimate acquaintance with those two roaring mountains of blubber which were bearing down upon her. When they were within just one more crashing plunge, she briskly drew aside, whirled about, and trotted off to join her cub. They were really so clumsy and slow, those walruses, that she hardly cared to hurry.

"For a few yards the two bulls pursued her; so she and the cub strolled off together to a distance of some fifty paces, and there halted to see what would happen next. Even creatures so dull-witted as those walrus bulls could see they would waste their time if they undertook to chase bears on dry land, so they turned back, grumbling under their long tusks, and joined the cow in inspecting the body of the dead calf. Soon coming to the conclusion that it was quite too dead to be worth bothering about, they all three went floundering on after the other cows, who had by this time got their own calves safely down to the water, and were swimming about anxiously, as if they feared that the enemy might follow them even into their own element. Then, after as brief an interval as discretion seemed to require, the old bear led the way back, sniffed at the body of the fat walrus calf, and crouched down beside it with a long woof of deepest satisfaction. For it is not often, let me tell you, that a polar bear, ravenous after her long winter's fast, is lucky enough to make a kill like that just at the very moment of coming out of her den."

Uncle Andy knocked the ashes out of his pipe with that air of finality which the Child knew so well, and sometimes found so disappointing'.

"But what became of the snowhouse baby?" he urged.

"Oh," replied Uncle Andy, getting up from the chopping-log, "you see, he was no longer a snowhouse baby, because the snowhouse was all smashed up, and also rapidly melting. Moreover, it was no longer winter, you know; so he was just like lots of other wild babies, and went about getting into trouble, and getting out again, and growing up, till at last, when he was almost half as big as herself and perfectly well able to take care of himself, his mother chased him away and went off to find another snowhouse."



CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE SILK WING

The first of the twilight over Silverwater. So ethereal were the thin washes of palest orange and apple-green reflection spreading over the surface of the lake, out beyond the fringe of alder bushes, so bubble-like in delicacy the violet tones of the air among the trees, just fading away into the moth-wing brown of dusk, that the Child was afraid to ask even the briefest questions, lest his voice should break the incomparable enchantment. Uncle Andy sat smoking, his eyes withdrawn in a dream. From the other side of the point, quite out of sight, where Bill was washing the dishes after the early camp supper, came a soft clatter of tins. But the homely sound had no power to jar the quiet.

The magic of the hour took it, and transmuted it, and made it a note in the chord of the great stillness. From the pale greenish vault of sky came a long, faint twang as of a silver string, where the swoop of a night hawk struck the tranced air to a moment's vibration. A minute or two later the light splash of a small trout leaping, and then, from the heart of the hemlock wood further down the shore, the mellow hoo-hoo-hoo-oo of a brown owl.

The Child was squatting on the mossy turf and staring out, round-eyed, across the water. Suddenly he jumped, clapped both grimy little hands to his face, and piped a shrill "Oh!" A bat's wing had flittered past his nose so close that he might have caught it in his teeth if he had wanted to—and been quick enough.

Uncle Andy turned, took his pipe from his mouth with marked deliberation, and eyed the Child severely.

"What on earth's the matter?" he inquired, after a disapproving pause.

"I thought it was trying to bite my nose," explained the Child apologetically.

"There's not very much to bite, you know," said Uncle Andy, in a carping mood at having had his reveries disturbed.

"I know it's pretty little, and turns up—rather," agreed the Child; "but I don't want anything to bite it."

"Nonsense!" said Uncle Andy. "Who'd want to?"

"It was that bat!" declared the Child, pointing to the shadowy form zigzagging over the fringe of bushes at the edge of the water. "He came down and hit me right in the face—almost."

"That bat bite you!" retorted Uncle Andy with a sniff of scorn. "Why, he was doing you the most friendly turn he knew how. No doubt there was a big mosquito just going to bite you, and that little chap there snapped it up in time to save you. There are lots of folk beside bats that get themselves misunderstood just when they are trying hardest to do some good."

"Oh, I see!" murmured the Child politely—which, of course, meant that he did not see at all what Uncle Andy was driving at. "Why do bats get themselves misunderstood, Uncle Andy?"

His uncle eyed him narrowly. He was always suspecting the Child of making game of him—than which nothing could be further from the Child's honest and rather matter-of-fact intentions. The question, to be sure, was rather a poser. While he pondered a reply to it—apparently absorbed in the task of relighting his pipe—the Child's attention was diverted. And forever the question of why bats get themselves misunderstood remained unanswered.

The bat chanced at the moment to be zig-zagging only a dozen feet or so away, when from the empty air above, as if created on the instant out of nothingness, dropped a noiseless, shadowy shape of wings. It seemed to catch the eccentric little flutterer fairly. But it didn't—for the bat was a marvelous adept at dodging. With a lightning swerve it emerged from under the great wings and darted behind Uncle Andy's head. The baffled owl, not daring to come so near the hated man-creatures, winnowed off in ghostly silence.

At the same moment a tiny, quivering thing, like a dark leaf, floated to the ground. There, instead of lying quiet like a leaf, it fluttered softly.

"What's that?" demanded the Child.

"Hush!" ordered Uncle Andy in a peremptory whisper.

The shadowy leaf on the ground continued to flutter, as if trying to rise into the air. Presently the bat reappeared and circled over it. A moment more and it dropped, touched the ground for a second with wide, uplifted wings, and then sailed off again on a long, swift, upward curve. The fluttering, shadowy leaf had disappeared.