Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did
not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with
its own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The
cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified,
therefore unknown and terrible--for the unknown was one of the chief
elements that went into the making of fear.
The hair bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently. How
was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to
bristle? It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible
expression of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life,
there was no accounting. But fear was accompanied by another
instinct--that of concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he
lay without movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to all
appearances dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the
wolverine's track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him
with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had
escaped a great hurt.
But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was
growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded
disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the
white wall.
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