As the harsh, incongruous sound startled the white stillnesses, in the lifting of an eyelid the little conqueror vanished. One of the canoeists stepped ashore, picked up the body of the slain mink, and threw it into the canoe. As the two resumed their 257 paddles and slipped away into the mist, they knew that from some hiding-place on the bank two bright, indignant eyes were peering after them in wonder.
Melindy and the Spring Bear
Soft, wet and tender, with a faint green filming the sodden pasture field, and a rose-pink veil covering the maples, and blue-grey catkins tinting the dark alders, spring had come to the lonely little clearing in the backwoods. From the swampy meadow along the brook’s edge, across the road from the cabin and the straw-littered barn-yard, came toward evening that music which is the distinctive note of the northern spring––the thrilling, mellow, inexpressibly wistful fluting of the frogs.
The sun was just withdrawing his uppermost rim behind the far-off black horizon line of fir-tops. The cabin door stood wide open to admit the sweet air and the sweet sound. Just inside the door sat old Mrs. Griffis, rocking heavily, while the woollen sock which she was knitting lay forgotten in her lap. She was a strong-featured, muscular woman, still full of vigour, whom rheumatism had met and halted in the busy path of life. Her keen and restless eyes were following eagerly every movement of a slender, light-haired girl in a blue cotton waist 259 and grey homespun skirt, who was busy at the other side of the yard, getting her little flock of sheep penned up for the night for fear of wild prowlers.
Presently the girl slammed the pen door, jammed the hardwood peg into the staple, ran her fingers nervously through the pale fluff of her hair, and came hurrying across the yard to the door with a smile on her delicate young face.
“There, Granny!” she exclaimed, with the air of one who has just got a number of troublesome little duties accomplished, “I guess no lynxes, or nothing, ’ll get the sheep to-night, anyways. Now, I must go an’ hunt up old ‘Spotty’ afore it gets too dark. I don’t see what’s made her wander off to-day. She always sticks around the barn close as a burr!”
The old woman smiled, knowing that the survival of a wild instinct in the cow had led her to seek some hiding-place, near home but secluded, wherein to secrete her new-born calf.
“I guess old ‘Spotty’ knows enough to come home when she gets ready, Child!” she answered. “She’s been kept that close all winter, the snow bein’ so deep, I don’t wonder she wants to roam a bit now she can git ’round. Land sakes, I wish’t I could roam a bit, ’stead er sittin’, sittin’, an’ knittin’, knittin’, mornin’, noon an’ night, all along of these ’ere useless old legs of mine!” 260