the Unseen Powers of the Wilderness. To him fell more than his due share of the family warmth, the family nourishment, to the end that he should grow up a peculiarly fine, vigorous, and prepotent specimen of his race, and reproduce himself abundantly, to the advantage, not only of the whole tribe of the snowshoe rabbits, but of all the hunting beasts and birds of the wilderness, who chiefly depend upon that prolific and defenseless tribe for their prey. Hence it came about that, though death in many furred and feathered forms prowled about them or hovered over them by night and by day, this particular mother and her young escaped discovery. No dreadful, peering eyes chanced to penetrate their screen of drooping fir branches. And the mother, on her perilous foragings in the twilight or the rose-grey dawn, was never pounced upon or trailed. For that one sturdy youngling's sake, it would seem, the spirits of the wild had decreed it so.
Presently, the harsh season relented. The rain ceased except for an occasional warm, vitalizing shower; the wilderness was steeped in caressing sunshine; the leaf buds of the birch and poplar burst into a flood of tenderest green; and in every open glade the Painted Trillium unfolded its fairy blooms of white and carmine.
