The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat.
She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on the meat-trail, and spending it vainly.

This famine was not a long one, but it was severe while it lasted.

The cub found no more milk in his mother's breast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself.
Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing.

Yet the failure of it accelerated his development.

He studied the habits of the squirrel with greater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and surprise it.