He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of their
burrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds and
woodpeckers. And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drive
him crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, and more
confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches,
conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the
sky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat,
the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused
to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and
whimpered his disappointment and hunger.
The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strange meat,
different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten,
partly grown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him.
His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know
that it was the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor
did he know the desperateness of her deed. He knew only that the velvet-
furred kitten was meat, and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful.
A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave,
sleeping against his mother's side. He was aroused by her snarling.
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