alarm and dread, and they are the voices of the owl, the loon, and the
timber-wolf. But to me their voices bring a solemn, at times an eerie,
charm, that I would gladly go miles to renew. Though much of the
wolf-howling has been of little appeal, I have heard wolf concerts that
held me spell-bound. On some occasions--but always at night--they
lasted without scarcely any intermission for three or four hours. The
first part of the programme was usually rendered--according to the
sound of their voices--by the youngest of the pack; later the
middle-aged seemed to take the stage; but of all the performance,
nothing equalled in greatness of volume or in richness of tone the
closing numbers, and they were always rendered by what seemed to be
some mighty veteran, the patriarch of the pack, for his effort was so
thrilling and awe-inspiring that it always sent the gooseflesh rushing
up and down my back. Many a time, night after night, beneath the
Northern Lights, I have gone out to the edge of a lake to listen to
them.

When hunting big game, such as deer, wolves assist one another and
display a fine sense of the value of team-work in running down their
prey. Though the wolf is a shy and cautious animal, he is no coward,
as the way he will slash into a pack of dogs goes far to prove. In the
North the stories of the wolf's courage are endless; here, for example,
is one: "During our residence at Cumberland House in 1820," says
Richardson, "a wolf, which had been prowling and was wounded by a
musket ball and driven off, returned after it became dark, whilst the
blood was still flowing from its wound, and carried off a dog, from
amongst fifty others, that howled piteously, but had no courage to
unite in an attack on their enemy."

Nevertheless, wolves rarely attack man, in fact, only when they are