Cautiously, he entered the drain, following the elusive scent which led under the cabin and showed that in his absence the other wood pussy had actually slept in his cozy nest. Now the den was empty, he had come back too late.
Striped Coat moved about, noting all the places where the other had walked also. Little changes had been made here and there—a burrow started, some earth moved away from the nest and the nest itself made smaller as if to fit around a smaller body. Presently he came again to the drain and started out, determined to go in search of this other, where he did not know.
And then he noticed the scent more strongly, and coming out of the stone pile found it stronger still, as if the other had been there only a moment before. Searching this way and that he picked up the trail and followed it into the woods. Had the other come back to the cabin and, finding the rightful owner in possession tried to escape unobserved? But how escape Striped Coat, whose nose was as keen as a knife blade was sharp; Striped Coat, the fame of whose fur had travelled over a whole country and who yet lived; Striped Coat who could travel a whole night without growing tired; Striped Coat who was lonely!
And did the other really wish very much to escape? Was not she too lonely? If not, why should she have gone so slowly into the woods as to be scarcely out of sight of the cabin when Striped Coat came rushing along her trail. Pretty little wood pussy! Was not she as thrilled as he at this meeting and timidly anxious to make friends?
And yet she pretended with all her might that she did not care the least bit about him and wanted to continue her lonely way, and only when Striped Coat seemed on the point of turning back would she look around and hesitate and lead him on again. And somehow it happened that instead of going further into the big woods, they made a circle which brought them back to the cabin. Side by side they neared the entrance, and just as the sun lit up the sky in the East they vanished that way into the stone pile, and Striped Coat had found a companion.
Side by side they neared the entrance
CHAPTER XIII
RAISING A FAMILY
When the early pink and white flowers of the trailing arbutus brightened the ground in many parts of the slowly awakening woods, Mr. Henry returned to the cabin. It was there that he found it possible to do his best work, for he was a writer, who needed the quiet and solitude of a place like this. Nothing really unpleasant ever seemed to happen there, and interesting things were always cropping up. For instance there was Striped Coat! And now Striped Coat had a mate!
But the other little wood pussy did not like the noise of footsteps on the floor over her head. They frightened her. So after two days of nervous watchfulness, she could bear it no longer and slipped out under cover of the twilight, picking her way into the woods until she reached an uprooted pine under whose trunk a large woodchuck had dug a burrow. This old fellow had only recently awakened from his winter sleep and was at that moment in his snug nest, dreaming no doubt of the time when the woods would again be full of eatable green things.