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 He was of the tribe of the homeless ones, who knew no shelters but the overhanging branches of bush or thicket, no snug lairs in which to hide from storm or cold, no nests save such dead leafage as they might find to crouch upon. In color he was of a rusty reddish brown above and pure white underneath, and he had the long, alert ears, narrow skull, and protruding, guileless eyes of all the hare family.

And now the Unseen Powers, taking stock of their favorite, perceived that he was bigger, stronger, fleeter, and more alert in all his senses, than any other buck snowshoe in the whole wide basin of the Ottanoonsis Stream. Thereupon they decided to leave him to his own resources. And straightway life grew even more eventful for him than it had been hitherto.

It was high summer in the Ottanoonsis Valley. The air, hot but wholesome, and sweet with faint, wild smells of moss and balsam fir and juniper, breathed softly through the dense, dark patches of evergreens, and rustled lightly among the birches and poplars which clothed the tumbled rocky ridges. The river, shrunken in its channel, here brawled musically over its shallow rapids, there widened out into still reaches where the great black moose would wade belly-deep as they fed upon the roots of the water lilies. Here and


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 there a fract of dark cedar swamps gave shelter to the bears. The Valley, an epitome of the wilderness, was the congenial home of foxes, lynxes, fishers, minks, weasels, skunks, and porcupines; and every single one of these, the blameless vegetarian porcupine excepted, was a tireless and implacable hunter of the snowshoe rabbits. Moreover, in the deeper recesses of the fir and hemlock woods several pairs of the murderous giant-horned owls had their retreats; and in the high ravines of the hills that rimmed the valley were the nests of the white-headed eagles and of the great, blue goshawks, those swiftest and most relentless of all the marauders of the air, who also looked upon the long-eared tribe as their most natural prey and easiest quarry. It would seem that, in the game of life as played in the Ottanoonsis Valley, the dice were heavily loaded against the Homeless One.

It was a sultry, drowsy afternoon, and the Homeless One, crouched beneath a thick juniper bush, was more nearly asleep than was at all usual with him. Indeed, it was the safest time of the day, when most of the hunting beasts were apt to be curled up in their lairs, when the giant owl slumbered in the depths of the hemlock glooms, when few enemies were abroad except the soaring eagles and the long-winged, tireless

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 goshawks. But it is the exceptions rather than the rules which make the life of the wilderness exciting. Just as young Snowshoe, who had browsed comfortly, was in his deepest drowse, his quivering nostrils, which never slept, signalled to his brain—"DEATH!" In that same lightning fraction of a second all his powers were wide awake, and, resting as he did in the position of a coiled spring, he shot into the air through the thin fringes of his shelter just as the slender, yellow shape of a hungry weasel alighted on the spot where he had been lying. His great furry hind paws, as they left the ground, just brushed the weasel's pointed nose.

The weasel's narrow mouth opened in a snarl of savage disappointment. Never before, in all his sanguinary experience of snowshoe rabbits, had he missed what seemed to him so sure and easy a kill. But it was not in the weasel nature to be discouraged, as one of the cat tribe might have been, by the failure of his first spring. Though his intended victim was already many feet away, lengthening out in great bounds which propelled him through the bushes at an amazing pace, the weasel darted after him confidently, trusting to his endurance and tenacity of purpose to win in the end against his quarry's greater speed. In a few seconds the fugitive was lost


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 to sight among the leafage, but the relentless pursuer followed the trail by scent for several hundred yards. Then, because he knew it was the habit of the snowshoe tribe to circle back so as to regain the familiar feeding grounds and coverts, this craftiest of hunters left the trail and cut a chord to the circle, expecting to intercept his quarry's flight. Had he been dealing with an ordinary, average snowshoe, things would have fallen out something after this fashion. He would have shown himself suddenly right in the fugitive's path and jumped at him with a terrifying snarl. The fugitive, panic-stricken to find himself thus confronted by the foe whom he had thought left far behind, would have cowered down trembling in his tracks and yielded up his life with a scream of anguish.

But in this case the weasel found his calculations all astray. This quarry's flight was so unexpectedly swift that the pursuer reached the point of interception too late to lie in ambush. He arrived just as young Snowshoe came by with a wild rush. He sprang, of course, but from too great a distance for his spring to be effective. Snowshoe, catching sight of him just in time, was not panic-stricken, but, without swerving from his course, went clean over him in one tremendous bound, and at the same time, as luck


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 would have it, fetched him a convulsive kick on the side of the head with one powerful hind paw as he passed. The weasel went sprawling, with a startled squeak. And the fugitive, tearing on, had vanished before he could recover himself. Refusing to be discouraged, however, and blazing with fury at his discomfiture, he settled himself down again doggedly to the pursuit. He had now a more just appreciation of his quarry's pace and powers; so he drew a longer chord to the circle, determined that this time he would get well ahead and make certain of his prey.

But unforunately for his enemy's designs, the Homeless One was no slave to the traditions of his tribe. He was now thoroughly frightened. He changed his mind about running in a circle. He lost all desire to get back to his familiar haunts. Untiring and swift he kept straight on; and the weasel, after waiting in vain for many minutes at the point where, by all the rules of rabbit hunting, the prey should have been intercepted and pulled down, gave up the chase in disgust and fell furiously to hunting wood mice. But his brain retained a vindictive memory of the great snowshoe who had so outwitted him.

The Homeless One, meanwhile, had reached a part of the valley which wore a novel air to him. This section had been chopped over by the


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 lumbermen some seven or eight years before, and cleared of nearly all of the heavy timber. There were few trees of any size; and most of the ground was covered with dense thickets of birch, poplar, Indian pear, wild cherry, and mountain ash, with here and there a patch of young balsam firs, darkly but richly green and giving forth an aromatic perfume in the heat. All the thickets were traversed by the runways of the snowshoe rabbits—narrow, well-trodden trails frequented by all the tribe.

The Homeless One, by this time, had got over his fright. Having a conveniently short memory, he had forgotten why he was frightened. And also, which was altogether unusual, he had forgotten the haunts of his past life, a mile or so away. A sleek young doe met him in the runway, and waved long ears of admiration at his comely stature and length of limb. He stopped to touch noses and exchange compliments with her. Coyly she hopped away, leading him into a cool, green-shadowed covert of sumach scrub.

The Homeless One was well content with his new feeding grounds. The strange does all received him with frank approval. He found the bucks, to be sure, by no means so friendly; but this was of small concern to him. If any of them tried to drive him away he bowled them


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 over with a careless rush, or treated them to a scornful kick, of such vigor as to bring them promptly to their manners. Being a philosophic folk they accepted his society forthwith and forgot that he was a stranger and an interloper.

As was the custom of the snowshoe tribe, the Homeless One was in the habit of passing most of the hours of full daylight crouched in a half doze in some dim covert. When hungry, or in the mood for diversion, he would slip forth, after assuring himself that there was no danger in the air, and either go leaping along the runways in playful pursuit of his acquaintances or fall to browsing upon the wild grasses and tender herbage.

One afternoon as he was hopping lazily after a pair of does who were merely pretending, by way of sport, to evade him, he was amazed and startled by the sight of a big goshawk shuffling at an awkward gait along the runway behind him. The runway was narrow, and densely overarched by low branches, so it was impossible that the great hawk could have seen him from the tipper air. Obviously, the enterprising bird had entered the runway at its outlet on a little glade some forty or fifty yards back; and here he was now foolishly undertaking to hunt the fleet snowshoes on their own domain.


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 The first impulse of the Homeless One, naturally, was flight. He knew that terrible long-winged hawk, swiftest and most valiant of all the marauders of the air. With one bound he cleared the two does and raced on for a score of yards. Then curiosity overcame his fear. He stopped short and turned to stare at his pursuer; and the frightened does, blundering against him as they fled past, nearly knocked him over.

Paying no attention to the does he sat up on his hind quarters, ears erect and eyes bulging, and watched the hawk's approach with mingled wonder and contempt. The beautiful, fierceeyed bird was not at home upon the level earth. His deadly talons were not made for walking, but for perching and for slaying. His realm was the free spaces of the air, and here in the runway he could not spread his wings. His progress was so slow, laborious, and clumsy that, but for the glare of his level, piercing eyes he would have seemed grotesque. The Homeless One, deeply puzzled, kept hopping away along the runway as the clumsy bird approached, preserving a safe distance of ten or a dozen yards, and ready to make an instantaneous dart into the underbrush on either side if the enemy should show the slightest sign of rising into the air. The two does, meanwhile, reassured by their companion's


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 boldness, had ventured back to peer at the strange intruder from farther up the runway.

Apparently undiscouraged by his failure to overtake the mocking fugitives, the great hawk shuffled steadily on, the three rabbits giving way rather contemptuously and at their leisure before him. This went on for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, till the runway came to an end in a patch of grassy open. As the foremost of the two does hopped forth into the sunlight there came a rush of wings overhead and a bright form, sweeping from just above the green birch-tops, struck her down. Her scream of terror was strangled in her throat as the talons of a second hawk, larger and more powerful than the first, clutched her life out in an instant. The other doe and the Homeless One, horrified out of their complacence, shot off in opposite directions through the densest of the underbrush. And the victor, standing erect and trim with one foot upon her still quivering prey, stared about her with hard, bright eyes like jewels, waiting for her mate, who had so cleverly driven the runway for her, to emerge from the shadows and join her in the feast.

After this adventure the Homeless One, who was gifted beyond his fellows with the power of learning from experience, was always a little sus-


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 picious of the tribal runways. He used them, for his convenience and for his amusement, as much as ever, but he had gained a dim notion of the advantages which they offered to his enemies. One evening, on the violet edge of dusk, when he was gambolling with another buck and several frisky does, a red fox came racing down the runway without making any attempt to disguise his approach. Swift as he was the swifter snowshoes easily outstripped him as they fled from his terrifying attack. Toward the other end of the runway they darted pell-mell, to be met by another fox, who, leaping among them and slashing from side to side with his long white fangs, brought down two of the panic-stricken fugitives before they could scatter across the open, while the original pursuer was able to seize a third in the momentary confusion. But the Homeless One was not there. At the first appearance of the red-furred enemy he had darted aside from the runway and slipped off like a ghost through the gloom of the underbrush. He was not badly frightened, so he only ran a dozen yards or so. Then he stopped and complacently fell to browsing, quite careless as to the fate of his companions. A snowshoe rabbit has enough to think of in guarding his own skin, and it had never


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 occurred to him to try and warn his fellows of the trap they were running into.

It was through such experiences, such hairbreadth adventures and escapes, that the Homeless One, always in hourly peril of his life but not without distractions and joys of his own to make that life sweet to him, saw the hot, bright summer pass into the crisp, exhilarating autumn, with its glories of scarlet on the maple leaves, dull crimson on the sumachs, aerial gold on the birches and poplars, and vivid, waxy vermilion on the heavy fruit clusters of the mountain ash trees overhanging the amber eddies of the Ottanoonsis Stream. The patches of barren, clothed only with a bushy scrub not more than a foot and a half in height, were tinged to a rich cobalt by the crowded masses of the blueberries. These luscious berries gave the snowshoes a pleasant variation to their diet, and the matted scrub was traversed abundantly by their runways. The black bears of the Ottanoonsis, also, would come to these blueberry patches and squat upon their plump haunches to feast greedily on the juicy harvest. The Homeless One, rejoicing in his swiftness of foot, regarded these huge, black, cunning-eyed beasts with scorn, because they were so slow and lumbering in their movements. One day he saw a bear apparently asleep, its rusty


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 black snout all purple-streaked with the juices of the berries it had been devouring. Yes, it was clear the bear was sleeping soundly, well stuffed with food and well content with the warm sun. The Homeless One had never before enjoyed such a chance to examine a bear at close quarters. It almost looked to him as if that bear was dead. A shrewd blue jay in a neighboring bush shrieked a note of warning. It was ignored. The Homeless One hopped closer and closer, investigating the monster with eyes and nose alike intensely interested. All at once, a huge, black paw, armed with mighty claws, swept down upon him with the speed of a trained boxer's fist. But the Homeless One was no such fool as the blue jay had taken him to be. When that murderous paw descended he was no longer just there but some seven or eight feet away and waving his long ears innocently. The bear, trying to look unconcerned, fell to munching blueberries again; and the Homeless One hopped off with his curiosity quite satisfied.

It was not until November came, with its biting sleet showers, its snows that fell, rested a few days, and vanished, its spells of sharp frost and sudden, bone-reaching cold, that the Homeless One began really to suffer the penalties of his inherited incapacity to make or find himself a


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 home. The comfortable leafage had fallen from all the trees and bushes except the evergreens, the firs and pines, hemlocks and cedars. It was dreary work to crouch beneath a dripping bush while the icy winds scourged the high valley of the Ottanoonsis. Nevertheless, he kept heart to play with his furry companions; and life grew more eventful day by day as his enemies grew more and more hungry and persistent in their hunting. It was about this time, when the snow began to linger upon 'the ground in glaring patches, that his coat began to change in color in order to make him less conspicuous. He was moulting his rusty-colored summer fur, and the new fur, as it came in, was pure white. By the time the snow had come to stay for the winter his clean, new, snowy coat was in readiness to match it, so that when he crouched motionless, his ears laid back and his nose between his paws, the keenest and hungriest of eyes would usually fail to distinguish him.

One windless, biting afternoon about sunset, when the shadows were stretching long and blue across the snow, the Homeless One was just stirring from his chilly couch to go and feed when from behind his sheltering bush a lean weasel darted upon him. Thanks to his amazing alertness—and his luck—he shot aside in time.


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 But just in time. It was the narrowest shave he had ever had; and he left a tantalizing mouthful of fur in the weasel's jaws.

As it happened, this was the same big weasel, swift and cunning, whom he had balked so ignominiously in the early part of the summer; and by some freak of chance the incident—and possibly some peculiarity in the scent of this huge snowshoe—now revived in the weasel's memory, and he took up the pursuit with a special fury. The snow lay thin and hard, so that the Homeless One was deprived of the advantage which his wide, furry feet would have given him had the snow been soft and deep. To make matters worse he was feeling slack and tired that day, and so fell short of his accustomed speed. As was his rule when pursued, he neither followed the runways nor fled in a circle, but raced straight off through the thickets, dodging erratically and traversing whatever obstacles he thought most likely to embarrass his pursuer. But to his horror he found that pursuer still close upon his heels. The shock of this discovery almost brought upon him that fatal panic which so often overtakes a hunted rabbit and makes him yield himself suddenly as an easy prey. But the Homeless One was of sterner stuff, and that moment's panic only stung him to fiercer effort.


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 Nevertheless, for the weasel's endurance was greater than his, the Homeless One's career would have come to an end in this last desperate adventure, but for the fact that the Unseen Powers once more woke up and took a whimsical hand in the affair. Just as he was darting, stretched out to his limit, beneath the shelter of a snowy bush, a great owl swooped and made a clutch at him. But the owl had miscalculated the speed which the Homeless One was displaying. She missed him; and she was just in time to seize his pursuer instead. Infuriated at this disappointment—for she would have greatly preferred tender rabbit to tough weasel—her talons closed like steel jaws upon the weasel's neck and loins. Rising noiselessly into the air she swept away into the shadows with her writhing victim. And the Homeless One, presently realizing that he was no longer pursued, hid himself in the deepest thicket he could find, with his heart nearly bursting between his ribs.

When winter had finally closed down upon the Ottanoonsis Valley, with snow four and five feet deep on the levels and a cold that made the trees snap like gunshots in the stillness, the Homeless One, though with no lair to hide in, was in reality less uncomfortable than he had been in the variable weather. The cold, though so intense,


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 was of a sparkling dryness; and every snow-covered bush was ready to afford him a secluded shelter. For him and his tribe—more fortunate in this hard season than their enemies—food was fairly abundant, for the depth of the snow enabled them to reach the tender twigs of the birches and willows and poplars. Moreover, alone among the kindreds of the wild, these weak, defenseless, homeless tribes of the snowshoes managed to find heart for gaiety and play amid the white desolation. When the full moon flooded the wastes with her sinister, icy-blue light, the snowshoes would hop forth from their coverts and gather in the open glades. There they would amuse themselves for hours with a strange game, leaping over each other, and chasing each other till their tracks made curious patterns on the snow almost as if they were performing some wild quadrille. But during these gaieties they were never unmindful of their caution. They could not afford to be, in that world of prowling death. At every entrance to the glade there would be stationed a sentinel, erect upon his hind quarters, long ears waving warily, every sense at utmost tension, ready to give the alarm by a loud pounding with his hind feet at the faintest sign of peril.


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 It was during one such moonlit revel that the Homeless One stood sentry at the post of chief danger, where a dense growth of hemlocks overhung the edge of the glade. He had been some time on duty, and was just about to give up his post to one of the revelers, who was even then hopping over to relieve him, when he caught sound of a stealthy movement close behind the screen of branches. He gave three frantic thumps with his powerful hind feet, and the revelers vanished as if wiped out by a giant breath. In the next instant he leapt for his life, desperately.

But he was too late—by just the moment it had taken him to give the warning signal. Even as he sprang a shape of shadowy grey, like a huge cat with pale moon-eyes and tufted ears, launching itself through the branches, fell upon him and bore him down; and long fangs reached his throat. With a snarl of triumph the famished lynx tore at the warm prey between his paws, and a dark stain spread upon the trampled snow. The Homeless One, as truly as many a hero of history and song, had died for the safety of his tribe.


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LONG the grim cliffs that guard, on the north, the gates of tide-vext Fundy, the green seas foamed and sobbed beneath the surge of the tremendous flood. There was no wind; and out from shore the slow swells, unfrothed by rock or shoal, heaved gently, smooth as glass. The sky, of that intensely pure, vibrant blue which seems to hold sparks of sharp light enmeshed in it, carried but two or three small clouds, floating far and high, clean-edged, and white as new snow.

Close above the water, and closely followed by his shadow, flew slowly a large and sinister-looking black bird, about midway in size between a duck and a goose, but very unlike either in shape and mien. Its head, neck, breast, and underbody, and lower part of the back, next the tail, were glossy black, with a sharp iridescence flashing green and jewelled in the sun. Its short, square, rigid tail was ink black, as were its legs and strong, webbed feet. Ink black, too, was its long, straight, hook-tipped beak—even longer


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 than the sharp, savage head, which was strangely adorned by a thin, backward-sweeping black crest on either side. At the base of the beak and on the throat just beneath it was a splash of orange; and the piercing eyes, hard as a hawk's, were surrounded each by a vivid orange patch of naked skin. In somber contrast to this impressive coloring, the back and wings were brown, the feathers trimly laced with black.

As the dark shape flew, almost skimming the transparent swells, its fierce, flame-circled eyes peered downward, taking note of the fish that swam at varying depths. These fruitful waters of Fundy teemed with fish, of many varieties and sizes, and the great cormorant, for all his insatiable appetite, could afford to pick and choose among them those most convenient to handle. As far as his taste was concerned there was little to choose, for quantity, rather than quality, was what appealed to him in fish.

Suddenly he made his choice. His tail went up, his head went down, his wings closed tight to his body, and he shot beneath the beryl surface. At first, he missed his quarry. But that was nothing to him. More fish than bird himself, now, he gave chase to it, at a depth of several feet below the water. Propelled by the drive of his powerful thighs and broad webs, by the screwing


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 twist of his Stern and his stiff tail, he darted through the alien element at a speed which very few of its natives could pretend to rival. From his wake a few bright bubbles escaped and flew upwards, to break in flashes of sharp light upon the silvery mirror of the under surface. The quarry, a gleaming and nimble "gaspereau," doubled frantically this way and that, its round, fixed eyes astare as if painted. But it could not shake off its implacable pursuer. In a dozen seconds or so it was overtaken. That long, hook-tipped beak snapped upon it inexorably, and paralyzed its writhings.

Shooting forth upon the surface, the cormorant sat motionless for a few moments, carrying his prize crosswise in his beak. Then with a sudden jerk tossing it in the air, he caught it dexterously head first as it fell, and gulped it down—but not all the way down. The black fisherman's stomach was, as it chanced, already full. The present capture, therefore, was lodged in the sac of loose skin below his throat, where its size and shape were clearly revealed.

For a short while—for a very few minutes, indeed, since the cormorant's digestion is swift and indefatigable, and has no objection to working overtime—the black fisherman sat floating complacently on the swells. Then suddenly, with


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 a convulsive movement that to an onlooker would have seemed agonizing, but which to him was a satisfying delight, he swallowed the prize in his gullet, stretching up and straightening his neck, till its trim outlines were quite restored. Immediately the hunting light flamed again into his savage eyes. With a heavy flapping rush along the surface he rose into the air and fell once more to quartering the liquid field for a new prey.

Meanwhile, from far up in the blinding blue where he wheeled slowly on wide, motionless wings, a white-headed eagle, most splendid and most shameless of robbers, had been watching the insatiable fisherman. Now he dropped swiftly to a lower level, where he again hung poised, his gem-bright, implacable eyes peering downward expectantly. It was not often that he interfered with the cormorants, whom he regarded as obstinate, ill-tempered birds, with an insistent regard for their rights and remarkable precision in the use of their long beaks. But hunting had been bad that day, and he was hungry. The complacent success of the black fisherman was galling to watch while his own appetite was so unsatisfied.

The cormorant, absorbed in his quest, and never dreaming of any interference, did not notice the long-winged shape circling high overhead.


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 He marked a fine whiting—rather bigger than he usually troubled with, but too tempting to resist. He dived, pursued it hither and thither for a breathless minute or more, captured it, and shot to the surface again triumphantly, with the captive still squirming between his deadly mandibles. In the same instant, before he had time to dive or dodge, there was a hissing rush, the air above his head was buffeted by tremendous wings; and great talons, closing like a trap on one half of the fish projecting from his beak, strove to snatch it from him. Startled and furious, he hung on like a bulldog, stiffening his broad tail and backing water with his powerful webs. He was almost lifted clear of the surface, but his weight, and his passionate resistance, were too much for even those mighty pinions to overcome. The fish was torn in half, and the eagle sprang upwards with his spoils. The cormorant swallowed the remaining fragment in fierce haste, blinking with the effort, and then sat and glared at the kingly marauder beating upwards into the blue.

After a few minutes of sullen meditation—and swift digestion—the untiring but still angry fisherman resumed his game. This time, however, he did not rise into the air, but swam slowly onward, searching the crystal tide beneath him till


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 he marked a likely prey. Then once more he dived, once more he chased the quarry through its native element, and captured it. But now, instead of shooting out boldly upon the surface, he rose cautiously and showed only his head above the water. There was his foe, already swooping again to the attack, but still high in air. In a lightning gulp he swallowed his prey, down into the halfway-house of his throat sac, and dived again, disappearing just as the robber, dropping like a thunderbolt, spread sudden wing and struck angrily at the spot where he had vanished.

As the eagle hovered for a moment, giving vent to his feelings in a sharp yelp of disappointment, the black fisherman reappeared some twenty or thirty paces away, and sat there eyeing his enemy with mingled triumph and defiance. He held his vicious-looking head slightly down between the shoulders, ready for a lightning stroke; and his long, efficient beak was half open. His sturdy spirit was not going to be browbeaten even by the king of the air.

The eagle, with snowy head stretched downwards, eyes gleaming bright as glass, and great talons menacingly outstretched, sailed backwards and forwards over him several times at a height of not more than four or five feet, hoping to


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 frighten him into disgorging the prey. Had the royal robber cared to push matters to a conclusion, he would certainly have been more than a match for the cormorant, but he knew well enough that he would not emerge without scars from the encounter; and he was not ready to pay any such price for a mouthful of fish. Presently, realizing that the surly fisherman was not going to be bluffed, he slanted aloft disdainfully, and went winnowing away over the cliffs to seek less troublesome hunting.

A few minutes later the cormorant, well pleased with himself, flew up to rejoin his nesting mate, on a grassy ledge just below the crest of the cliff.

Arriving at the nest he alighted close beside it, and immediately sat up, supported by his stiff, square tail, as rigidly erect as a penquin. His vigilant gaze scanning rock and sky and sea, the polished, black armor of his hard plumage radiant in the sunlight, he looked a formidable sentinel. His dark mate, hungry and weary after long brooding, slipped from the nest and plunged downward to refresh herself in the fruitful gleaming pastures of the tide, leaving the nest and eggs to his guardianship.

It was a crude affair, this nest—a haphazard, messy structure of dry, black seaweed and last


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 year's grey mullein stalks. Within the nest were four big eggs of a dirty pale-green color, partly covered with a whitish, limey film. These treasures the black fisherman watched proudly, ready to do battle for them against any would-be thief that might approach.

In truth the nest was in a somewhat exposed position. At this point the ledge was only about four feet wide, and just behind the nest the cliff face was so crumbled away that any sure-footed marauder might easily make his way down from the cliff top, some thirty feet above. In front of the nest, on the other hand, the cliff face dropped a sheer three hundred feet to the surges that seethed and crashed along its base. Some twenty paces to the right the ledge widened to a tiny plateau, carpeted with close, light-green turf and dotted with half a dozen dark juniper bushes. A most desirable nesting place, this, but already occupied to the last available inch of space by the earlier arrivals of the cormorant migration. The black fisherman and his spouse, tardy in their wooing and their mating, had lingered overlong in the warm waters of the south and been obliged to content themselves with such accommodation as was left to them. To their courageous and rather unsociable spirits, however, this was a matter of small concern. They had the com-


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 panionship of their kind—but not too close, not too intimate; just where they wanted it, in fact. They were well fitted to hold the post of danger—to guard the gateway to the cormorant colony. Few other birds there were in that colony who would have had the mettle, bold as they were, to face the eagle as the black fisherman had done.

Those dirty-green eggs in the slovenly nest were now near their time of hatching, so the mother hurried back from the sea as soon as possible, to cover them with her hot and dripping breast, setting her mate free to pursue his one engrossing pastime. A day or two later, however, when faint cries and the sound of tapping beaks began to be heard within the shells, then the devoted mother would not leave the nest even for a moment, so the black fisherman had to fish for her as well as for himself. His pastime now became a heavy task, made doubly hard by the fact that the eagle returned from time to time to harass him. His method of foraging, at first, was to fill his own stomach, then his neck pouch till it would hold no more, and then fly home with a big fish held crosswise in his beak. This was the eagle's opportunity. When the cormorant was in mid-air, half way between cliff and sea, and flying heavily with his load, the crafty robber would swoop down and catch him


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 at a hopeless disadvantage. Unable either to strike back or to resist, and mindful of his responsibilities, he would relinquish the prize and fly back home to feed his mate on what he could disgorge from his crop. After two experiences of this sort he gave up attempting to carry anything home in his beak and contented himself with what his pouch would hold. Thereupon the eagle, no longer tempted by the sight of an actually visible prey and marking the long, black beak all in readiness to strike, gave up molesting him. But the rest of the colony, less wary and quick-witted than the black fisherman, were continually being forced to pay tribute to the robber king. When their eggs were hatched, both parents were kept busy, the four youngsters being voracious beyond even the usual voracity of nestlings. At first they were but blind, stark-naked, ink-black, sprawling bundles of skin and bone, their great beaks ever wide open in demand for more, more, more. Their tireless parents had not only to catch, but also to half digest their food for them, pumping it into their throats from their own stomachs, which were thus kept working at high pressure.

As the nestlings grew—which they did with great rapidity—their appetites increased in proportion and when their eyes opened there was


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 an added emphasis to the demand of their ever open beaks. The father and mother began to grow thin with their exertions. Then one day the fickle Fates of the Sea came very near to closing the mother's career and throwing the whole responsibihty upon the black fisherman's shoulders. The mother was down, far down below the surface, chasing a nimble sprat through the green transparency, when a swift and hungry dogfish with jaws like those of his great cousin, the shark, came darting in her wake. Fortunately for her the sprat dodged—and she, in turning to pursue, caught sight of her own terrible pursuer. Straight as an arrow she shot to the surface; and then, with sure instinct, she flashed aside at right angles, thus evading, though only by a hair's breadth, her enemy's upward rush. Flapping desperately along the water for a few feet she sprang into the air with a frantic effort; and the jaws of the dogfish snapped just below her vanishing feet. Somewhat shaken she started homeward. But before she had gone halfway she regained her self-possession. She would not return empty to her nestlings, confessing defeat. Whirling abruptly she flew off far to the left, and resumed her fishing in a deep cove where that particular dogfish, at least, was not likely to pursue her. But the adventure had warned her


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 to keep her eyes open, and on her return to the nest she managed to convey to her mate the news that dogfish were about. It was information which that wary bird was not likely to forget.

Shortly after this incident the overworked parents were afforded a certain measure of relief, but in a form which was very bitter to them. One morning when they were both absent from the nest, and the nestlings, full-fed for the moment, sprawled comfortably in the sun, a slender, longtailed, grey-and-buff chicken hawk came slanting down over the crest of the cliff. Its swift, darting flight carried it low above the crowded nests of the cormorant colony, but, audacious slaughterer though it was, discretion kept it from coming within reach of the menacing beaks uplifted to receive it. The lonely nest of the black fisherman, however, left unguarded for the moment, caught its eye. It pounced like lightning, struck its talons into the tender body of one of the nestlings, despatched it with a single blow, dragged it forth upon the edge of the nest, and fell to tearing it greedily. A moment more and another of the nestlings would have been served in the same fashion; but just in the nick of time the black fisherman himself arrived. The hawk saw his ominous form shoot up over the rim of the ledge. With one thrust of its fine pinions it


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 Sprang into the air, evading the onslaught by a splendid side sweep far out over the depths. Then it beat upwards and over the crest of the cliff, its bleeding victim dangling from its talons. With a croak of fury the cormorant gave chase. For half a mile in over the downs he followed, lusting for vengeance. But his heavy flight, though strong and straight, was no match for the speed of that beautiful and graceful slayer. The hawk presently vanished with its prey among the dark tree tops of an inland valley, and the black fisherman flapped back sullenly to his nest.

The three remaining nestlings throve all the better for the loss of their companion. They were nearly half feathered before any further misadventure befell the nest. Then it came in an unexpected guise.

A wandering fox, far out of his accustomed range, came to the crest of the cliff and stood staring curiously out into the vast space of air and sea. There was a wind that day, and his bushy, red brush of a tail was blown almost over his back. The cormorant colony was just below him. At the sight of it his eyes narrowed cunningly. Sinking flat in the grass he thrust his sharp face over the edge, in the shelter of an overhanging rosebush, and peered down upon the novel scene. What a lot of nests! What a


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 tempting array of plump younglings! His lean jaws slavered with greed.

The fox knew nothing about cormorants. But he could see the black, fine-plumaged guardians of the nests were very hefty, self-confident birds, with bold, fierce eyes and extraordinarily efficient-looking beaks. He speedily came to the conclusion that the immediate vicinity of those beaks would be bad for his health. Decidedly those grapes were sour. Being a sagacious beast and not given to wasting efiort on the unattainable, he was just about to curb his appetite and turn away when his glance fell upon the black fisherman's nest, lying far apart and solitary. To be sure, both parents were beside the nest at the moment. But they were only two; and after all they were only birds. This looked more promising. He crept nearer, and waited, it being his wise custom to look before he leaped.

Both parents were busy feeding the gaping mouths of their young, and the fox watched with interest the unusual process. It seemed to him absurd, and unnecessary; and his respect for the great, black birds began to diminish. Presently the larger of the two, the black fisherman himself, having disgorged all the food he could spare, plunged downward from the ledge and disappeared.


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 This was the red watcher's opportunity. With a rushing leap down the steep slope he sprang upon the nest. Never dreaming that the one lone guardian would dare to face him, and craving the tender flesh of the young rather than the tough adult, he made the mistake of ignoring the mother bird. He seized one of the nestlings and crushed the life out of it in a single snap of his jaws. But at the same instant the stab of a steel-hard mandible struck him full in one eye, simply obliterating it, and a mighty buffeting of wings forced him off the nest.

With a yelp of rage and anguish the fox turned upon his assailant, and seized her by one wing, high up and close to the body. As his fangs ground through the bone the dauntless mother raked his flank with her stabbing beak and threw herself backwards, frantically struggling, toward the lip of the ledge. Her instinctive purpose was twofold—first, to drag the fox from the precious nest; second to seek escape from this land enemy in either the air or the water, where she would be more at home. The fox, his one remaining eye for the moment veiled by his opponent's feathers, could not see his peril, but resisted instinctively whatever she seemed trying to do.

From the first moment of the battle the mother


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 bird had sent out her harsh cries for help. And now, while the unequal combat went on at the very brink of the abyss, the black fisherman arrived. With a mighty shock he landed on the fox's back, striking and stabbing madly. Bewildered, and half stunned, the fox jerked up his head to seize his new antagonist; but, met by a demoralizing thrust fair on the snout, he missed his aim, and caught the throat of the mother bird instead. The next instant, in a mad confusion of pounding wings and yelpings and black feathers and red fur, the three went over the brink together in an awful plunge.

Immediately the black fisherman, who was unhurt, flew clear. He could do nothing but follow the other two downwards, as they fell rolling over each other in the death grip. Half way down they crashed upon a jutting point of rock, and fell apart as they bounced off. With two tremendous splashes they struck the water. The body of the fox sank from sight, whirled away by an undercurrent and probably caught in some deep crevice, there to be devoured by the crabs and other sea scavengers. The dead cormorant, supported by her feathers and her hollow bones, lay floating, belly upward, with sprawled wings, on the surface. Her mate, alighting beside her, swam around her several times, eyeing her with


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 an intense gaze. Then, realizing that she was dead, he slowly swam away to take up the double duties now thrust upon him. After all, as there were now but two mouths left in the nest to feed, there was no dotibt but that he would be equal to the task.


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E was in a darkness that was dense, absolute, palpable. And his eyes were shut tight—though it made no difference, under the circumstances, whether they were shut or open. But if his sense of sight was for the moment off duty, its absence was more than compensated for by the extreme alertness of his other senses. To his supersensitive nostrils the black, peaty soil surrounding him was full of distinct and varying scents. His ears could detect and locate the wriggling of a fat grub, the unctuous withdrawal of a startled earthworm. Above all, his sense of touch—that was so extraordinarily developed that it might have served him for eyes, ears, and nostrils all in one. And so it came about that, there in the blackness of his close and narrow tunnel, deep in the black soil of the swamp, he was not imprisoned, but free and at large as the swift hares gamboling overhead—far freer, indeed, because secure from the menace of prowling and swooping foes.

Starnose was a mole. But he was not an


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 ordinary mole of the dry uplands and well-drained meadows, by any means, or he would not have been running his deep tunnel here in the cool, almost swampy soil within a few yards of the meandering channel of the Lost Water. In shape and color he was not unlike the common mole—with his thick, powerful neck of about the same size as his body, his great, long-clawed, immensely strong, handlike forefeet, and his mellow, velvety, shadowy, gray-brown fur. But his tail was much longer, and thicker at the base, than that of his plebeian cousin of the lawns. And his nose—that was something of a distinction which no other beast in the world, great or small, could boast of. From all round its tip radiated a fringe of feelers, no less than twenty-two innumber, naked, flexible, miraculously sensitive, each one a little nailless, interrogating finger. It entitled him, beyond question, to the unique title of Starnose.

This tireless worker in the dark was driving a new tunnel—partly, no doubt, for the sake of worms, grubs, and pupae which he might find on the way, and partly for purposes known only to himself. At the lever where he was digging, a scant foot below the surface, the mould, though damp, was fairly light and workable, owing to the abundance of fine roots and decayed leaf-


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 age mixed through it; and his progress was astonishingly rapid.

His method of driving his tunnel was practical and effective. With back arched so as to throw the full force of it into his foreshoulders, with his hind feet wide apart and drawn well up beneath him, he dug mightily into the damp soil straight before his nose with the long, penetrating claws of his exaggerated and powerful forepaws. In great, swift, handfuls (for his forepaws were more like hands than feet), the loosened earth was thrown behind him, passing under his body and out between his roomily straddling hind legs. And as he dug he worked in a circle, enlarging the tunnel head to a diameter of about two and a half inches, at the same time pressing the walls firm and hard with his body, so that they should not cave in upon him. This compacting process further enlarged the tunnel to about three inches, which was the space he felt he needed for quick and free movement. When he had accumulated behind him as much loose earth as he could comfortably handle, he turned round, and with his head and chest and forearms pushed the mass before him along the tunnel to the foot of his last dump hole—an abrupt shaft leading to the upper air. Up this shaft he would thrust his burden, and heave it forth among the


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 grass and weeds, a conspicuous and contemptuous challenge to would-be pursuers. He did not care how many of his enemies might thus be notified of his address, for he knew he could always change it with baffling celerity, blocking up his tunnels behind him as he went.

And now, finding that at his present depth the meadow soil, at this point, was not well stocked with such game—grubs and worms—as he chose to hunt, he slanted his tunnel slightly upward to get among the grass roots near the surface. Almost immediately he was rewarded. He cut into a pipelike canal of a large earthworm just in time to intercept its desperate retreat. It was one of those stout, dark-purplish lobworms that feed in rich soil, and to him the most toothsome of morsels. In spite of the eagerness of his appetite he drew it forth most delicately and gradually from its canal, lest it should break in two and the half of it escape him. Dragging it back into his tunnel he held it with his big, inexorable "hands," and felt it over gleefully with that restless star of fingers which adorned the tip of his nose. Then he tore it into short pieces, bolted it hurriedly, and fell to work again upon his tunneling. But now, having come among the grass roots, he was in a good hunting ground and his work was con-


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 tinually interrupted by feasting. At one moment it would be a huge, fat, white grub as thick as a man's little finger, with a hard, light-copper-colored head; at the next a heavy, liver-colored lobworm. His appetite seemed insatiable; but at last he felt he had enough, for the moment. He stopped tunneling, turned back a few inches, drove a short shaft to the surface as a new exit, and heaved forth a mighty load of débris.

In the outer world it was high morning, and the strong sunlight glowed softly down through the tangled grasses of the water meadow. The eyes of Starnose were but two tiny, black beads almost hidden in fur, but after he had blinked them for a second or two in the sudden light he could see quite effectively—much better, indeed, than his cousin, the common mole of the uplands. Though by far the greater part of his strenuous life was spent in the palpable darkness of his tunnels in the underworld, daylight, none the less, was by no means distasteful to him, and he was not averse to a few minutes of basking in the tempered sun. As he sat stroking his fine fur with those restless fingers of his nose, and scratching himself luxuriously with his capable claws, a big grasshopper, dropping from one of its aimless leaps, fell close beside him, bearing down with it a long blade of grass which it had clutched


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 at in its descent. Starnose seized the unlucky hopper in a flash, tore off its hard inedible legs, and started to eat it. At that instant, however, a faint swish of wings caught his ear and a swift shadow passed over him. At the touch of that shadow—as if it had been solid and released an oiled spring within his mechanism—he dived back into his hole; and the swooping marsh hawk, after a savage but futile clutch at the vanishing tip of his tail, wheeled off with a yelp of disappointment.

It was certainly a narrow shave; and for perhaps a whole half minute Starnose, with his heart thumping, crouched in his refuge. Then, remembering the toothsome prize which he had been forced to abandon, he put forth his head warily to reconnoiter. The hawk was gone; but the dead grasshopper was still there, green and glistening in the sun, and a burly bluebottle had just alighted upon it. Starnose crept forth cautiously to retrieve his prey.

Now at this same moment, as luck would have it, gliding along one of the tiny runways of the meadow mice, came a foraging mole shrew, a pugnacious cousin of the starnose tribe. The mole shrew was distinctly smaller than Starnose, and handicapped with such defective vision that he had to do all his hunting by scent and


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 sound and touch. He smelt the dead grasshopper at once, and came straight for it, heedless of whatever might stand in the way.

Under the circumstances Starnose might have carelessly stood aside, not through lack of courage, but because he had no special love of fighting for its own sake. And he knew that his cousin, though so much smaller and lighter than himself, was much to be respected as an opponent by reason of his blind ferocity and dauntless tenacity. But he was no weakling, to let himself be robbed of his lawful prey. He whipped out of his hole, flung himself upon the prize, and lifted his head just in time to receive the furious spring of his assailant.

Between two such fighters there was no fencing. The mole shrew secured a grip upon the side of the immensely thick and muscular neck of his antagonist, and immediately began to worry and tear like a terrier. But Starnose, flexible as an eel, set his deadly teeth into the side of his assailant's head, a little behind the ear, and worked in deeper and deeper, after the manner of a bulldog. For a few seconds, in that death grapple, the two rolled over and over, thrashing the grass stems. Then the long teeth of Starnose bit in to the brain; and the mole shrew's


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 body, after a convulsive stiffening, went suddenly limp.

But the disturbance in the grass—there being no wind that golden morning—had not escaped the eyes of the foraging marsh hawk. She came winnowing back to learn the cause of it. The sun being behind her, however, her ominous shadow swept over the grass before her, and Starnose, unfailingly vigilant even in the moment of victory, caught sight of it coming. He loosened his hold on his dead adversary and plunged for the hole. At least, he tried to plunge for it. But the plunge was little more than a crawl, for the teeth of the mole shrew, set deep in his neck, had locked themselves fast in death, and all that Starnose could do was to drag the body with him. This however, he succeeded in doing, so effectively that he was in time to back down into the hole, out of reach, just as the hawk swooped and struck.

The clutching talons of the great bird fixed themselves firmly in the protruding hind quarters of the mole shrew, and she attempted to rise with her capture. But to her amazed indignation the prize resisted. Starnose was holding on to the walls of his tunnel with all the strength of his powerful claws, while at the same time struggling desperately to tear himself loose from the grip of those dead teeth in his neck. The contest, how-


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 ever, was but momentary. The strength of Starnose was a small thing against the furious beating of those great wings; and in two or three seconds, unable either to hold on or to free himself from the fatal incubus of his victim, he was dragged forth ignominiously and swept into the air, squirming and dangling at the tip of the dead mole shrew's snout.

Starnose was vaguely conscious of a chill rush of air, of a sudden, dazzling glare of gold and blue, as the victorious hawk flapped off toward the nearest tree top with her prize. Then suddenly, the grip of the dead jaws relaxed and he felt himself falling. Fortunately for him the hawk had not risen to any great height—for the marsh hawk, hunter of meadow mice and such secretive quarry, does not, as a rule, fly high. He felt himself turn over and over in the air, dizzily, and then landed, with a stupefying swish, in a dense bed of wild parsnips. He crashed right through, of course, but the strong stems broke his fall and he was little the worse for the stupendous adventure. For a few moments he lay half stunned. Then, pulling himself together, he fell to digging with all his might, caring only to escape from a glaring outer world which seemed so full of tumultuous and altogether bewildering perils. He made the earth fly in a shower, and


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 in an unbelievably brief space of time he had buried himself till even the tip of his tail was out of sight. But even then he was not content. He dug on frantically, till he was a good foot beneath the surface and perhaps a couple of feet more from the entrance. Then, leaving the passage safely blocked behind him, he enlarged the tunnel to a small chamber, and curled himself up to lick his wounds and recover from his fright.

It was perhaps half an hour before Starnose completely regained his composure and his appetite. His appetite—that was the first consideration. And second to that, a poor second, was his need of tunneling back into his familiar maze of underground passages. Resuming his digging with full vigor, he first ran a new dump shaft to the surface, gathering in several fat grubs in his progress through the grass roots. Then, at about six inches below the surface—a depth at which he could count upon the best foraging—he began to drive his tunnel. His sense of direction was unerring, which was the more inexplicable as there in the thick dark he could have no landmarks to guide him. He headed straight for the point which would, by the shortest distance, join him up with his own under ways.

It happened, however, that in that terrible


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 journey of his through the upper air the swift flight of the hawk had carried him some distance, and across the course of a sluggish meadow brook, a tributary of the Lost Water. Suddenly and unexpectedly his vigorous tunneling brought him to this obstacle. The darkness before him gave way to a glimmer of light. He hesitated, and then burrowed on more cautiously. A screen of matted grass roots confronted him, stabbed through with needles of sharp gold which quivered dazzlingly. Warily he dug through the screen, thrust forth his nose, and found himself looking down upon a shimmering glare of quiet water, about a foot below him.

Glancing upward to see if there were any terrible wings in the air above, Starnose perceived, to his deep satisfaction, that the steep bank was overhung by a mat of pink-blossomed wild roses, humming drowsily with bees. The concealment, from directly overhead, was perfect. Reassured upon this point he crawled forth, intending to swim the bright channel and continue his tunnel upon the other side. The water itself was no obstacle to him, for he could swim and dive like a muskrat. He was just about to plunge in, when under his very nose popped up a black, triangular, furry head with fiercely bright, hard eyes and lips curled back hungrily from long and


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 keen white fangs. With amazing dexterity he doubled back upon himself straight up the slope and dived into his burrow; and the mink, springing after him, was just in time to snap vainly at the vanishing tip of his tail.

The mink was both hungry and bad-tempered, having just missed a fish which he was hunting amid the tangle of water weeds along the muddy bottom of the stream. Angrily he jammed his sharp snout into the mouth of the tunnel, but the passage was much too small for him and Starnose was well out of reach. He himself could dig a burrow when put to it, but he knew that in this art he was no match for the expert little fugitive. Moreover, keen though was his appetite, he was not overanxious to allay it with the rank and stringy flesh of the Underground One. He shook his head with a sniff and a snarl, brushed the earth from his muzzle, and slipped off swiftly and soundlessly to seek more succulent prey.

It was ten or fifteen minutes before Starnose again ventured forth into the perilous daylight. His last adventure had not in the least upset him—for to his way of thinking a miss was as good as a mile. But he was hungry, as usual, and he had found good hunting in the warm light soil just under the roots of the wild rosebushes along the bank. At length his desires once more turned


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 toward the home tunnels. He poked his starry nose out through the hole in the bank, made sure that there were no enemies in sight, slipped down to the water's edge, and glided in as noiselessly as if he had been oiled. He had no mind to make a splash, lest he should advertise his movements to some voracious pike which might be lurking beneath that green patch of water-lily leaves a little further upstream.

Deep below the shining surface he swam, straight and strong through a world of shimmering and pellucid gold, roofed by a close, flat, white sky of diaphanous silver, upon which every fallen rose petal or drowning fly or moth was shown with amazing clearness. As he reached the opposite shore and clambered nimbly up through that flat, silver sky he glanced back, and saw a long, gray shadow, with terrible jaws and staring, round eyes, dart past the spot from which he had just emerged. The great pike beneath the lily pads had caught sight of him, after all—'but too late! Starnose shook himself, and sat basking for a few moments in the comfortable warmth, complacently combing his face with his nimble forepaws. He had an easy contempt for the pike, because it could not leave the water to pursue him.

Some fifty yards away, on the side of the brook from which Starnose had just come,


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 beside a tiny pool in the deeps of the grass stood an immense bird of a pale bluish-gray color, motionless as a stone, on the watch for unwary frogs. Though the rich grasses were about two feet in height, the blue heron towered another clear two feet above them. He was all length—long stiltlike legs, long snakelike neck, long daggerlike bill, and a firm, arrogant crest of long, slim, delicate plumes. All about him spread the warm and sun-steeped sea of the meadow grass—starred thick with blooms of purple vetch and crimson clover and sultry orange lilies—droning sleepily with bees and flies, steaming with summer scents and liquidly musical with the songs of the fluttering, black-and-white bobolinks, like tangled peals of tiny, silver bells. But nothing of this intoxicating beauty did the great heron heed. Rigid and decorative as if he had just stepped down from a Japanese screen, his fierce, unwinking, jewel-bright eyes were intent upon the pool at his feet. His whole statuesque being was concentrated upon the subject of frogs.

But the frogs in that particular pool had taken warning. Not one would show himself so long as that inexorable blue shape of death remained in sight. Nor did a single meadow mouse stir amid the grass roots for yards about the pool; for word of the watching doom had gone abroad.


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 And presently the great heron, grown tired of such poor hunting, lifted his broad wings, sprang lazily into the air, and went flapping away slowly over the grass tops, trailing his long legs stiffly behind him. He headed for the other side of the brook and fresh hunting grounds.

At the first lift of those great, pale wings Starnose had detected this new and appalling peril. By good luck he was sitting on a patch of bare earth, where the overhanging turf had given way some days before. Frantically he began to dig himself in. The soft earth flew from under his desperate paws. The piercing eyes of the heron detected the curious disturbance, and he winged swiftly for the spot.

But Starnose, in his vigilance, had gained a good start. In about as much time as it takes to tell it, he was already buried to his own length. And then, to his terror, he came plump upon an impenetrable obstacle—an old mooring stake driven deep into the soil. In a sweat of panic he swerved off to the left and tunneled madly almost at right angles to the entrance.

And just this it was—a part of his wonderful luck on this eventful day—that turned to his salvation. Dropping swiftly to the entrance of the all too shallow tunnel, the great heron, his head bent sideways, peered into the hole with one


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 implacable eye. Then drawing back his neck till it was like a coiled spring, he darted his murderous bill deep into the hole.

Had it not been for the old mooring stake, which compelled him to change directions, Starnose would have been neatly impaled, plucked forth, hammered to death, and devoured. As it was, the dreadful weapon merely grazed the top of his rump—scoring, indeed, a crimson gash—and struck with a terrifying thud upon the hard wood of the stake. The impact gave the heron a nasty jar. He drew his head back abruptly and shook it hard in his indignant surprise. Then, trying to look as if nothing unusual had happened, he stepped down into the water with lofty deliberation and composed himself to watch for fish. At this moment the big pike came swimming past again, hoping for another chance at the elusive Starnose. He was much too heavy a fish for the heron to manage, of course; but the heron, in his wrath, stabbed down upon him vindictively. There was a moment's struggle which made the quiet water boil. Then the frightened fish tore himself free and darted off, with a great red wound in his silver-gray side, to hide and sulk under the lily pads.

In the meantime Starnose, though smarting from that raw but superficial gash upon his hind


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 quarters, was burrowing away with concentrated zeal. He had once more changed directions, and was heading, as true as if by compass, for the nearest point of the home galleries. He was not even taking time to drive dump shafts at the customary intervals, but was letting the tunnel fill up behind him, as if sure he was going to have no further use for it. He just wanted to get home. Of course he might have traveled much faster above ground; but the too exciting events of the past few hours had convinced him that, for this particular day at least, the upper world of sun and air was not exactly a health resort for a dweller in the under ways. Through all his excitement, however, and all his eagerness for the safe home burrows, his unquenchable appetite remained with him; and, running his tunnel as close to the surface as he could without actually emerging, he picked up plenty of worms and grubs and fat, helpless pupae as he went.

It was past noon, and the strong sunshine, beating straight down through the grass and soaking through the matted roots, was making a close but sweet and earthy-scented warmth in the tunnel, when at last Starnose broke through into one of his familiar passages, well trodden by the feet of his tribe. Not by sight, of course—for the darkness was black as pitch—but by the


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 comfortable smell he knew exactly where he was. Without hesitation he turned to the left and scurried along as fast as he could, for the big, central burrow, or lodge, where his tribe had their headquarters and their nests. The path forked and reforked continually, but he was never for one instant at a loss. Here and there he passed little, short side galleries ending in shallow pockets, which served for the sanitation of the tribe. Here and there a ray of green-and-gold light flashed down upon him as he ran past one of the exit shafts. And then, his heart beating with his haste and his joy he came forth into a roomy, lightless chamber, thick with warmth and musky smells, and filled with the pleasant rustlings and small, contented squealings of his own gregarious tribe.


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HE windless, gray-violet dusk, soft as a mole's fur, brooded low over the bushy upland pasture. In the shallow valley below, a gleam of yellow lamplight shone steadily from the kitchen window of the little backwoods farmhouse. Faint, comfortable sounds floated up on the still air from the low-roofed barn, where the two horses, resting after a hard day's work, reveled in their generous feed of oats. There was a soft creaking, a rattle, and a splash, as the farmer's wife, a dim, gray figure, drew a bucket of water from the deep well in the center of the farmyard. From a patch of alder swamp beyond the brook which threaded the valley a bullfrog uttered his hoarsely mellow croak, repeating it several times with subtle variations as if trying to improve the note. Twilight and the dewfall hushed the world to peace.

In the rough, upland pasture, among the scattered stumps and patches of juniper and young fir


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 seedlings, some five or six brown rabbits were at play in the sheltering dusk like carefree children. They went leaping softly this way and that, passing and repassing each other in what looked almost like the set figures of a dance. At intervals one of the furry little players would stop short and thump heavily with his strong hind paws upon the firm, close-cropped turf, producing a curious, dully resonant sound. At the signal all the other players would turn about, as if on drill, and continue the game with what looked like a new figure.

In the midst of this furry merrymaking, from the dark woods which overhung the back and northern side of the pasture, came a strange and ominous voice. Whuh-whoo-oo,—Whuh-whoo-oo,—deep-toned, long-drawn, sonorous, and thrilling with an indescribable menace, it sounded, twice, across the quiet dusk.

At the first note the play of the rabbits stopped short, as if all the players had been smitten instantaneously into stone. In the next half second the majority of them darted frantically into the shelter of the nearest bushes, with a momentary flicker of white tail fluffs as they vanished. The rest, as if too panic-stricken to move, or else fearing the revelation of movement, simply crouched flat where they were, motionless save for the


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 wild pounding of their frightened hearts. Their shadowy fur melting perfectly into the dusk and the shadowy turf, so long as they kept still they were as invisible as their companions who had found refuge under the bushes. And they kept still, as if frozen.

It was perhaps half a minute later when a great, dim form, as noiseless as the passing of a cloud shadow, came winnowing low, on downy wings, over the bushes of the silent pasture. It seemed but a fragment of denser dusk come alive—except for its dreadful eyes. These eyes—great, round, palely shining globes—searched the thickets and the open spaces with deadly intentness, as their owner swept hither and thither with his head stooped low, on the watch for any slightest motion or sign of life. But nothing stirred.

Then, just as the dim shape drifted over the open space where the rabbits were crouching, it opened its sickle-shaped beak and gave forth a sudden, piercing cry, terrible and startling. This was too much for the overstrung nerves of the crouching rabbits. They sprang into the air as if shot, and leaped frantically for the bushes. The dim form swooped, struck; and the nearest fugitive felt himself clutched in neck and back by knife-edged talons, hard as steel. He gave one


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 short scream of terror, strangled on the instant. Then he was swept into the air, kicking spasmodically. And the dim shape bore him off into the deeps of the woods, to the hollow where its fierce mate and savage nestlings had their home.

The great horned owl alighted with his prey on a stout, naked branch which stood out conveniently beside the spacious hole in the ancient, half-dead maple tree which formed his dwelling. He laid the limp body of the rabbit across the edge of the nest, half in the hole and half out of it, and with a curious, formal bobbing of his fiercely tufted head he sidled up close to his mate, softly snapping his hooked beak by way of greeting, and giving utterance to a low, twittering sound that seemed ridiculously unsuitable to such a ferocious countenance as his. His mate, larger than he and even more savage-looking, had herself just returned from a successful hunt, laden with a luckless duck from some backwoods farmyard. Her two owlets, nearly half-grown but still downy, were tearing greedily at the duck and bolting huge mouthfuls of it, feathers and all. She herself had already satisfied her appetite—having probably gulped down two or three mice and small birds, captured on the edge of twilight, before bringing home the duck to her brood. She was not so unselfish as her mate, who, blood-


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 thirsty and insatiable marauder though he was, could boast, nevertheless, of no small domestic virtue. A model spouse and father, he seldom consulted his own needs till he was sure that his mate and his young were fed. Now, having assured himself that all were supplied, he turned again to his prey. Holding it down with both feet, securely, he tore the skull apart with his sharp and powerful beak, and devoured first the head, which he considered the choicest morsel, bolting it bones and all. In the meantime his mate, moved purely by the hunting lust, had sailed noiselessly from her perch and winnowed off between the dark and silent tree trunks to seek for other prey.

Having swiftly and voraciously satisfied his appetite, the great owl wiped his crimsoned beak on the edge of the nest, sat up very erect, and for a few moments solemnly watched his youngsters still tearing at the carcass of the duck. He was massively built, broad-breasted, and about two feet in length from the tip of his short, broad tail to the crown of his big, round head with its two fierce, hornlike ear tufts. In color he was a mixture of soft browns, grays, and fawns, above, distributed irregularly in vague bars and splashes, while below he was of a creamy buff, delicately barred with deep chocolate. The wide, circular


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 discs of flat feathering which surrounded his eyes were cream-white, shading into fawn, and between them came down a frowning, pointed brow of darker feathers. His eyes, extraordinarily bright and cruel, were enormous, as round as full moons, of a gemlike yellow with great, staring pupils of jetty black. They were fixed in their sockets—as with all owls—so that when he wished to turn them he had to turn his whole head with them. His look was always a full-faced stare, challenging and tamelessly savage. His legs and feet were thickly and softly feathered in white, right down to those inexorable horn-colored talons whose clutch could throttle a full-grown goose in a few seconds.

To ordinary ears, of man or beast, the silence of the forest, at this hour, was absolute. But to the great owl's supersensitive eardrums—veritable microphones, they were—the darkness was filled with innumerable furtive sounds. A far-off beech leaf, suddenly unburdening itself of a, gathering load of dew, spoke loudly, though without significance, to him. He caught the infinitesimal whisper of crowded young twigs as they occasionally stretched themselves in their growth. Down in the thick earth-darkness close to the ground, perhaps fifty feet away, he detected the stealthy, padded footfalls of a prowl-


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 ing lynx, so light as to be scarcely audible to their owner himself. Without moving his body he turned his head in the direction of the sound, and stared intently. The lynx, a brilliant tree climber, was one of the very few wild creatures whom he feared; and he held himself in tense readiness to signal for his absent mate to do battle, if necessary, for his nest and young. But the sinister footfalls crept off in another direction, and he knew that his home—which was well concealed from the ground by a bushy growth of Indian pea and wild viburnum—had not been discovered.

A minute or two later the grim listener on his high listening post detected a fairy rustling which was not of stretching twigs or dew-laden leaves. It came from under a fir thicket some fifty or sixty yards away; and so faint it was that other ears than his could scarce have caught it at a distance of ten paces. But he knew it at once for the scurrying of the shy little wood mice over the floor of the dead and crisp fir needles. On downy wings he dropped from his perch and sailed, swift and soundless as thought, straight in beneath the overhanging fir branches. His outstretched talons struck, like lightning, in two directions at once—and in one successfully. In that annihilating clutch a furry little life went


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 out, without time for even a squeak of protest. The unerring hunter swept on without a pause, and rose to the nearest convenient limb. Settling himself there for a moment he lifted his tiny victim in one claw—like a parrot eating a biscuit—bit off its head daintily and swallowed it with an air of one appreciating a titbit, and then bolted the body at one careless gulp. A few seconds later he was back again upon his home perch, sitting upright as stiffly as a sentry at salute, his great eyes flaming spectrally through the dark.

And now thin pencils of pale light began to penetrate the uppermost branches of the trees, giving an ink-black edge to the shadow below. As the first slender ray reached him the great owl opened his beak and ruffled up the feathers about his neck.

Whuh-whoo-oo, Whuh-whoo-oo-oo, he called, a hollow, long-drawn cry all on one deep note, which seemed to come from several different quarters of the darkness at once. It was impossible, indeed, for any of the timid lurkers in the coverts, who listened to it with quivering hearts, to make out just where it did come from. But his far-off mate heard it, and knew. And from somewhere away beyond the other side of the pasture, came the response, muffled by dis-


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 tance and ghostly dim—Whuh-whoo-oo-oo. It signified to him that she was on her way back to the nest. He waited motionless perhaps half a minute, glanced at the two owlets who sat solemnly in the doorway of the nest digesting their heavy meal, and then sailed off through the silvering tree tops to hunt fresh victims about the pasture lands and clearings.

As he emerged into the open country, his soundless passing, through the strange, distorting light of the low moon, was like that of a specter—but unlike a specter he swept along with him a twisting and writhing shadow which gave warning of his approach. Mice, rabbits, chipmunks, even the dauntless and furious weasels, slipped to cover. The field was as empty as a desert, except for one big, black-and-white striped skunk which glanced up at him, unconcernedly, and went on digging up a mouse net. Tyrant and assassin though he was, and audacious as he was murderous, and more than a match in beak and talons for several skunks at once, he had no inclination to come to close quarters with this self-assured little creature which carried such an armory of choking poison under its tail. He swerved sullenly off to the edge of the woods again, and continued his flight along beneath their shadow till he reached the edge of the


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 brook which flowed behind the farmyard. Here he dropped upon a momentarily unwary frog which was sitting, half-submerged, at the water's edge. He carried it to a near-by stump, and swallowed it whole. Then his ears caught a soft, sleepy twittering from among the branches of a straggling thorn bush some twenty or thirty yards downstream. A sudden ray from the moon, just rising over the hill, had awakened a sleeping song sparrow, and he had murmured some drowsy endearments to his mate who sat brooding her half-fledged nestlings close beside him. The next instant a monstrous, shadowy form with blazing eyes had burst in upon them. Both tiny parents were clutched simultaneously and squeezed to death before they had time to realize what doom had overtaken them. They were promptly gulped down, in quick succession; and then, sitting erect and solemn close beside the nest, the grim marauder proceeded to pick the half-naked nestlings from the nest one by one and to swallow them with deliberation. Though so small, they were the tastiest morsels he had sampled for a long time—since the nestful of partridge eggs, just beginning to hatch, which he had ravaged some weeks earlier in the season.

Up to this point, knowing that his greedy family was well supplied, the great owl had had no


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 thought but for his own feasting. Now, however, he felt it was time to hunt for bigger game—for something substantial to carry home to the nest. He winged swiftly across to the farmstead, where the barn and house and woodshed stood black against the low moon. No living thing was astir in the farmyard, except a big, white cat prowling for mice along the edge of the barn. Though she was dangerous game he swooped at her without a moment's hesitation. But the cat had seen him, just in time; and with an indignant spitting she whisked in under the barn. He snapped his beak angrily, made a tour of the buildings, and found the window of the chicken house. But it was closed with wire netting. Glaring in through the wide meshes he saw the hens all asleep on their perches, some with half-grown chickens beside them. But the vigilant red cock was awake and, eyeing him defiantly, gave utterance to a sharp kut-ee-ee-ee of warning. The marauder tore savagely at the meshes with his mighty talons; but the wire was too strong for him, and in an instant the place was in an uproar of frightened squawks and cacklings. The kitchen door flew open with a bang. A stream of yellow lamplight flooded across the shadowy yard. The farmer ran out, shouting and swearing fluently, and the would-be assassin, furious at being barred


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 from such a luxury of slaughter, flew off to seek some less well-guarded prey.

About a quarter of a mile farther down the valley lay another little backwoods farm, whose owner, when clearing the land, had had the good taste to leave several fine elms standing beside the house and barns. The valley was by this time full-flooded with moonlight, and the great owl, to avoid observation, flew low beside the willow and alder bushes which fringed the brook. Across the open meadow that divided the barns from the brook he skimmed, almost brushing the grass tops, then rose noiselessly into the deep shadows which clung among the branches of the thick-leaved elms. And here, as luck would have it, he found two turkey hens, roosting upon one of the topmost boughs.

The turkeys, being light sleepers, detected him at once; but all they did was to stretch out their long necks inquiringly and cry Kwit-kwit, kwit-kwit. They were acquainted with the harmless, little, mouse-hunting barn owl, but this great bird was something they had never seen before; and they were full of curiosity. In one moment he had risen above them. In the next he had fallen upon the nearest, clutched her by the neck, and choked her foolish noise. Beating her wings convulsively, she toppled off her perch. Her captor


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 strove to bear her up and fly off with her, but she was too heavy a burden for him, and with a mighty flapping the two came slowly to the ground.

This was not exactly what the marauder wanted, but he was not one to lose any opportunity for destruction. He bit and tore with that deadly sickle of his beak till he had decapitated his massive prize; and though he was by no means hungry, he broke up and swallowed most of the head, for the sake of the brains. In the meantime the other turkey, still resting on her perch, had kept on uttering her foolish Kwit-kwit, kwit-kwit, as if begging to know what all the excitement meant. She all too soon found out. Glancing up from his sanguinary meal, as if angered by her stupid noise, the great owl fixed her for a second or two with his glassy stare. Then he shot up through the gloom till he was a few feet above the anxious chatterer, pounced upon her vindictively, and swept her, strangled and futilely fluttering, from her perch. Her life promptly went out through her gaping beak; but she, too, proved too heavy for her destroyer's wing power; and despite his determined flapping, he was borne slowly to the ground. He tore off her silly head, in sheer wantonness of destruction. Then, wiping his beak on her still quivering body, he


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 bounced into the air and flew away to seek other quarry, sailing close to the ground to avoid making himself conspicious, and glaring fiercely under every bush as he passed.

It chanced that an indiscreet hen, impatient of the safe nests in the barn and fowl house where, in return for security, her precious eggs were always taken from her, had found a secret spot under a clump of lilacs at the back of the garden. Here she had accumulated a clutch of eggs, which she had now been happily brooding for close upon the allotted three weeks. The chicks within were stirring, and just beginning to tap with tiny bills at the walls of their shell prisons. The proud mother was answering these taps with low, crooning sounds of encouragement and content.

It was those soft utterances of mother love that betrayed her to her doom. She saw a pair of wide, dreadful eyes glaring in upon her through the leafage. With a shrill screech of defiance she ruffled up all her feathers, threw back her head, and faced the enemy with threatening, wide-open beak. But of scant avail was all her devoted courage against such a foe as this. In a moment she was gripped by irresistible talons, jerked, valiantly battling, from her nest, strangled, and tossed aside, a heap of feebly-kicking feathers. And the slaughterer fell to gorging himself with


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 the just-hatching eggs. Full-fed though he was, such supreme delicacies as these could not be left behind; and he managed somehow to put away the whole nestful. Then he grasped the body of the mother in his claws, hopped awkwardly out of the bushes with it, bore it somewhat heavily into the air, and headed his flight direct for the hollow tree in the woods.

He flew high now, having no care to conceal his coming, and the backwoods world of forest and scattered farms, rough, stump-strewn pastures and raw, new clearings, with the silver coils of the slow brook brightly threading them, lay outspread sharp-edged below him in the white flood of the moonlight. The robber flew more slowly than was his wont, his limp booty being a massive-bodied Brahma of some six or seven pounds dead weight, and he himself somewhat sluggish from his overhearty feast. But there was no need for haste; so he did not exert himself, but winnowed on through the blue-silver night, well satisfied with his list of slain.

Suddenly, from far over the tree tops came a hollow call. Whuh-whoo; whuh-whuh, whuh-whu—not long-drawn, but staccato, hurried, urgent. It was his mate's voice, summoning him, crying for help. He woke instantly from his lethargy, dropped his booty, answered with one


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 sonorous Whoo-oo-oo, and shot homeward with the utmost speed.

During his absence that prowling lynx, which had caused him apprehension an hour before, had crept back on the trail of a rabbit, to the neighborhood of the hollow tree. She had missed the rabbit; but happening to glance upward, with cruel eyes as round and moonlike as those of the great owl himself, she had detected the big, black hole in the age-whitened trunk. Such a hole, she knew well enough, would be sure to be occupied by something—most probably by something young and defenseless, and good to eat. She was hungry; arid, moreover, she had a pair of sturdy kittens to feed at home in her own well-hidden lair. She ran nimbly up the huge, gnarled trunk to investigate.

At the first rattling sound of her claws upon the bark, the mother owl, who had been snuggling her owlets, shot forth angrily from the hole to see what creature was so bold as to invade her realm. But at the sight of the lynx—a gigantic, tuft-eared cat as big as a fox hound—her wrath changed to frantic terror for her young, who were not yet sufficiently fledged for effective flight. Though even more bloodthirsty and wastefully murderous than her mate, her courage was of the finest, and she knew no such


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 thing as shirking where the defense of her roundeyed nestlings was concerned. With that one sharp cry for help—which her homing mate had heard—she swooped from her branch and struck the lynx heavily in the face with wing and claw.

Taken by surprise, the lynx was almost jolted from her hold. With a harsh spitting she cowered, and shielded her face between her paws, while the frantic mother raked her back savagely. Then, furious at being so handled by an adversary whom she despised, the lynx scrambled on upward, and gained the branch beside the nest. From this vantage point she struck out like lightning with her great, armed paw, just as the desperate mother was swooping upon her again. Had the blow got fairly home it would have been final; but the agile bird swerved backward in time, and it struck her but glancingly, with its force half spent, on the breast. Her dense, clastic armor of feathers saved her; but a shower of feathers flew, and she was hurled halfway to the ground before she could recover from the shock.

Imagining that her adversary was disposed of, the lynx thrust her head into the hole. The hardy owlets bit and clawed her face valiantly, but she snatched one in her jaws, crunched its neck, and plucked it forth upon the branch. Holding it


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 comfortably between her huge forepaws she lay flat along the branch and proceeded to devour it. As she did so the desperate mother, shaken but undaunted, returned to the attack and struck her again in the face with rending talons.

Holding her prey firmly with one paw the lynx, with an ear-splitting yowl of pain and rage, lashed out again at her resolute assailant, but missed her aim completely. And at this juncture the male bird arrived.

In silence he shot downward and struck at the great, gray beast. The latter had caught sight of him as he swooped. She let go of the dead owlet—which dropped to the ground—and rose slightly on her hind quarters in order to meet this new attack with the full armory of her foreclaws. By a fortunate stroke she caught him by one wing; and the next moment her long fangs were buried in his thigh. Held thus at close quarters he pounded madly with his wings, and tore in a frenzy at his enemy's face with his beak and his free talons. He was pulled down, however, and borne backward, for all his indomitable struggles; and getting her claws set into one wing, near the shoulder, the lynx fairly tore it from its socket. But undaunted even in that hopeless strait, he went on fighting to the death.


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 The mother owl, meanwhile, had been tearing and clawing viciously at the lynx's neck, from above. Unable any longer to endure this torment, the latter tried to double back upon the narrow branch and defend herself. The male bird heaved up valiantly beneath, and with a last effort fixed his beak in the side of her throat. She lost her balance, and the two toppled off into space together. Over and over they turned, closed locked, and then fell apart. The owl, all but dead and with one wing hanging useless from its tendons, continued to roll over and over in his descent, and landed with a thud which finished him. The lynx, on the other hand, turning herself rightside up and spreading all four legs apart so as to make a sort of parachute of herself, landed lightly on the powerful, elastic springs of her paws. The mother owl had been on top of her all the way down, and was still frantically tearing at her back. But the lynx had had enough. With a screech of panic she darted under some low branches, scraping off her assailant, and sped away, belly to earth like a terrified cat, through the densest thickets she could find.

The victorious mother owl did not pursue. She circled twice, very slowly, above the sprawled bodies of her mate and her nestling, staring down


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 upon them with wide, unwinking, expressionless eyes. Then she winnowed soundlessly up to her perch, and hurried into the nest to see if her other fledgling had escaped unharmed.


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UILLS was born in a capacious hole in the heart of a huge and ancient red maple near the banks of the Tobique River, in New Brunswick.

The hole had to be capacious; for Quills's mother was a fine porcupine, in her prime, fully two and a half feet in length, massive in build, and a good twenty pounds in weight; and moreover, her armament of long, bristling spines made it essential that she should not be unduly crowded in her nest. But the entrance was only large enough for her to squeeze through it without discomfort, so the dusky interior was sheltered, warm and dry. It was also safe; for in all the wilderness there was no savage marauder reckless enough to invade a porcupine's nest while the owner was at home.

In proportion to the size of his mother, Quills, like all young porcupines, was an amazingly big baby. His length was about eleven inches, his weight a shade over two pounds—and this when


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 he was not yet twenty-four hours old. He was richly clothed with long, dark fur, almost black, under which lay hidden his sprouting armament of spines, already formidable though only about half an inch in length. Born with the insatiable appetite of his tribe, he lay stretched out between his mother's stumpy forelegs nursing greedily, with an incessant accompaniment of tiny squeaks and squeals of satisfaction. The sounds were loud enough to attract the notice of two little black-and-white woodpeckers who had just alighted on the trunk near the hole. With sleek heads cocked alertly and bright eyes keen with interrogation they listened to the curious noises inside the tree. Then they clambered on up the trunk to a safer height, wondering no doubt that any youngling should be guilty of such an indiscretion as to thus betray the secret of its hiding place. They could not know that the porcupine baby, almost alone among the babes of the wild, was exempted, through the reputation of his spines, from the law of silence as the price of life.

It was spring; and spring comes late to the high valley of the Tobique River. The ancient red maple, still full of vigorous life in the sapwood of its outer shell, was mantled over every branch and twig with a glowing veil of tiny, rose-red blooms, though the green of its leaf buds was


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 hardly yet showing through the brown sheaths. The ice had broken up and been swept away in tumbling masses, and the current of the swift river, swollen with the spring freshet, filled the air about the porcupine's nest with a pleasant, softly thunderous roar. From all the open glades the snow was gone, though masses of it, shrunken and grayish, still lingered in the fir thickets and the deeper hollows. On the drier hillocks and about the old rotting stumps a carpet of round, flat, yellowish-green and bronzy leaves shielded the lurking pink-and-white blossoms and haunting perfumes of the Mayflower, or Trailing Arbutus, the shy darling of the Northern spring. The fairy fragrance came and went elusively across the pervading scent of moist earth and spicy balsam tips, as the mild breeze pulsed vaguely through the forest.

It was midafternoon of the second day of Quills's life. Pleasantly fatigued from his double duty of nursing and growing, he fell into a sound sleep. Then his mother, spurred by the now insistent demands of her own appetite, gently disentangled herself from the clutch of his baby claws in her fur, crawled from the hole, and descended the trunk to seek a hasty meal.

But what was haste for a porcupine would have been regarded as the extreme of lazy loiter-


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 ing in any other creature of the wild. At the foot of the old maple she stood for some moments loudly sniffing the air with her blunt nostrils. Then, as if making up her mind that it was hemlock she wanted, she ambled off with heavy deliberation to the nearest hemlock tree, climbed it with a noisy rattling of claws, settled herself comfortably in the first crotch, and fell to gnawing the rough bark. When she had taken the edge off her appetite with this fare—which no stomach but a porcupine's could ever digest—she crawled out along a branch, as far as it would bear her weight, and gathering a lot of the slender twigs between her forepaws, made a hearty dessert of the dark-green, glossy frondage. Other hemlocks, standing at a greater distance from her nest, already bore the conspicuous marks of her foraging; but this one she had hitherto left untouched, against the day when she would be wanting to take her meals near home.

While his mother was away feeding, Quills had slept, soundly and silently, for perhaps an hour or more. Then he woke up—hungry, of course, as befitted a healthy young porcupine. Finding no warm mother to snuggle him and feed him, he at once set up his small but earnest complaint of whines and squeals and grumbles, all indifferent as to who or what might overhear him.


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 As it chanced at this moment, a hungry weasel—the most insatiably bloodthirsty of all the wilderness prowlers—was just approaching the root of the old maple, nosing out the somewhat stale trail of a rabbit. As his keen ear caught these telltale sounds from within the tree, he stopped short, and his malignant little eyes began to blaze. Then he glided around the great trunk, halted just below the hole, and sniffed discriminatingly at the strong, fresh scent upon the bark. But at this point he hesitated—and it is not usual for a hungry weasel to hesitate. The scent was porcupine; and a grown-up porcupine was a proposition which not even his audacity was prepared to tackle. The sound from within that tempting hole, to be sure, was the voice of a baby porcupine. But was the baby alone—or was the mother with it? In the latter case, he would as soon have jumped into the jaws of a lynx as enter that hole. The fresh scent on the bark offered no solution to the problem. Was it made in coming out or going in? He sniffed at it again, growing fiercer and more hungry every moment.

Suddenly he heard behind him a dry rattling of quills, and a confused noise of squeals and chattering grunts. The mother porcupine was hurrying across the moist turf, gnashing her jaws, and looking twice her natural size with every