Chapter 4 — Chapter 2

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely classified
the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after such
classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and
restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in
obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away
from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of light. When his
mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during the intervals that
he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the whimpering cries that tickled
in his throat and strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did not know
that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with its own daring,
and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub knew only that
the sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore unknown and
terrible—for the unknown was one of the chief elements that went into the
making of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back, but it bristled silently. How
was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? It
was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of the
fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting.
But fear was accompanied by another instinct—that of concealment. The cub
was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without movement or sound, frozen,
petrified into immobility, to all appearances dead. His mother, coming home,
growled as she smelt the wolverine’s track, and bounded into the cave and
licked and nozzled him with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that
somehow he had escaped a great hurt.