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 quill on end. In her rage and anxiety she was making remarkable speed, for a porcupine. The weasel, his long white fangs bared, and his eyes red with disappointed fury, whipped about and stood facing her till she was within three or four feet of him. But for all his rage he was no fool. For her gnashing yellow teeth he had no respect whatever. But those deadly, poisonous, needlesharp spines of hers! He had no wish to interview them too closely. With eleventh-hour discretion he slipped aside to make way for her, and glided off to pick up again the trail of the rabbit.

The mother porcupine never even turned her head to see where the enemy had gone. Wild with anxiety she scrambled up the trunk and into her nest. Her experienced nose, however, at once assured her that the weasel had not been inside. Instantly appeased she stretched herself on her side, drew the complaining youngster to her breast, licked and nosed him for a few moments, and settled into a comfortable dose.

Having this hearty mother's attention all to himself—an exceptional advantange, as a porcupine baby has generally one brother or sister if not more, to share the maternal supply—young Quills grew and throve amazingly. And his armor of spines throve with him. In a few weeks he was out of the hole and following his mother


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 up into the hemlock trees, where he speedily learned to feed on the glossy, green tips of the frondage. From this diet he passed quickly to the stronger fare of the harsh and bitter bark, the gnawing of which was a delight to his powerful, chisel-like teeth.

By the time the full flush of the Tobique summer, ardent and swift, had crowded the richsoiled valley with greenery and bloom, Quills's mother had grown altogether indifferent to him. She had long ago refused him her breasts, of which, indeed, he had no further need. But she still permitted him to follow her about, if he wanted companionship, so long as he did not trouble her. And in this way he learned the few things—astonishingly few, it would seem—that a porcupine needs to know in order to hold his own in the struggle for existence. He learned, among other things, that nearly all the green stuff that the forest produced was more or less fit for his food—that there were other trees besides the hemlock whose bark was tasty and nourishing and pleasantly resistant to his teeth, and that in a broad, sunny backwater of the river there grew a profusion of great, round, flat leaves, the pads of the water lily, which were peculiarly thrilling to his palate. In fact, most of his learning had to do with food, which was what he ap-

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 peared to live for. His enemies were few, and seldom enthusiastic. And he never troubled his head about avoiding them. With an indifference nothing less than colossal he left it to them to avoid him, if they wished; and they did so wish, ninety-nine times out of the hundred.

Along toward the latter part of August, Quills found that his mother was no longer indifferent. She had grown actually unfriendly. Whenever he came near her she grunted and chattered at him in such an irritable fashion that it was obvious, even to a not oversensitive spirit like his, that his companionship was resented. This attitude neither grieved nor angered him, however. She was no longer of any importance to him. He simply quit following her, went his own way, and forgot her. Striking off on his own, and impelled by instinct to seek a fresh range for himself, he plunged into the still warm tide of the sunny backwater and swam, with much splashing and little speed, to the opposite bank. Swimming was no task to him, for his coat of hollow quills made it impossible for him to sink. The backwater was not more than thirty or forty yards in width; but when he had crossed it, and crawled forth upon the opposite bank, he felt that he had found a new world, and owned it.

He ambled joyously along the bank to a point


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 where he had marked a bed of bright green arrow weed, and gorged himself to his great content on the shapely, pointed leaves and stout, succulent stalks. Then he climbed a big poplar and curled up to sleep, self-sufficient and pleased to be alone.

Quills was by this time more than half grown up; and moreover, thanks to his ample nourishment when a baby, he was as big and strong as many a less favored porcupine at maturity. In color he was of a very dark brown, verging on black, and peppered with a dingy, yellowish white, his long fur being dark with light tips, and his spines cream-colored with black tips. The spines on his body ranged from two to four inches in length, and when he was not angry they were partly concealed by the fur, which was considerably longer. The quills on his head and the sides of his face were about an inch in length. His short, blunt muzzle was free from spines, but closely furred to the lips, and conspicuously adorned by his large and prominent front teeth, his gnawing teeth, which were of a vivid darkyellow color. His legs, and all the under parts of his body, were clothed in dense, soft fur, entirely without spines. His tail, about five inches in length, was very thick and powerful, and heavily armed with spines to the tip. The spines on his


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 body were for his protection, but this armed tail was his one weapon of offense—a weapon with which, at a single stroke, he could fill an enemy's mouth or paws with a hundred barbed and poisonous needles. And the peculiar deadliness of these needles, large and small alike, lay in their power of swift and inexorable burrowing. Once their subtle points penetrated the skin their innumerable microscopic, scalelike barbs would begin working them inward through the muscles, setting up violent inflammations as they went, till they would reach some vital part and put their wretched victim out of his misery.

So far in his career young Quills had had no occasion to test the efficiency of that formidable tail of his, as a weapon, though from time to time he would stretch himself elaborately, leg after leg and claw after claw, ruffle up all his spines as if to see that they were in working order, and lash out alarmingly with the aforesaid tail by way of keeping it efficient and ready for action. And now, as luck would have it, the first enemy he was to encounter was the very one against whom his best defenses were of least avail—namely, man himself. But fortunately for young Quills, and for this, his brief biography, the man in question was neither in need of meat (least of all, of such harsh meat as porcupine!)


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 nor was he of a destructive disposition. He was magnanimous—and Quills never knew that he held on to his little lease of life by favor.

The man had come up the Tobique in a canoe, partly for the fishing, partly to refresh his spirit with the clean airs of the wilderness. He left his guide frying bacon and trout for the midday meal, and strolled up the backwater to cast a fly and see if there were any big fish lurking in the shade of the lily pads. He forgot about his fishing, however, when he caught sight of Quills, looking somewhat like a big, dilapidated bird's nest, curled up asleep in the crotch of a young poplar. Being interested in all the kindred of the wild, the man reeled in his line, stood the rod carefully in a bush, and went and shook the tree as hard as he could, to see what Quills would do.

Quills woke up with a startled squeak, dug his claws into the bark to secure himself, and peered down to see what was the matter. At sight of this wanton disturber of his dreams he grew very angry. He chattered, and grunted, and clashed his big yellow teeth loudly, and ruffled up his deadly spines as a clear warning to the intruder to keep off.

The man laughed, as if pleased at this bold defiance. He looked about for a long pole, think-


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 ing to pole Quill from his perch so as to observe him a little nearer at hand. But poles for poking porcupines do not lie about the Tobique wildnerness—as he presently realized. He decided to climb the poplar, for a closer—but not too close—investigation. But the moment he began to climb, Quills, boiling with indignation, started down to meet the danger halfway. He came down backward, with his tail lashing savagely. And he came down so astonishingly fast that the man had barely time to drop to the ground and jump out of the way, chuckling at the speedy success of his experiment.

"Half a jiffy and the beggar would havs made my face look like a pincushion," he muttered, approvingly.

Reaching the ground Quills stopped, and stood chattering his defiance. The man, some paces distant, eyed him humorously for a few seconds, then went and got his fishing rod out of the bush. With a bit of string from his jacket pocket he tied his cloth cap over the butt of the rod; and then, like a fencer with a button on his foil, with this weapon of courtesy he came and made a gentle thrust at Quills's blunt nose. Quick as a flash Quills whisked around, and lashed at the impertinent weapon with his tail. The man at once withdrew it, and examined his cap. It was


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 stuck full, at the one slashing blow, with beautiful, polished, black-tipped, white quills.

"Thanks, awfully, old chap," said he. "They are lovely specimens, so I won't tease you any more," and carrying his prize carefully before him he turned back to the canoe. Quills glared after him till his long form had vanished through the trees. Then his anger cooled, and exultation at his easy and signal triumph took its place. His spines went down till they were hidden beneath the dark fur and he seemed to have shrunk to half his size.

The stress of his emotions having made him hungry—anything will do to make a porcupine hungry—he crawled down to the edge of the water and fell to feasting in a patch of arrow weed.

Autumn on the Tobique passed swiftly, in a blaze of color. A few sudden touches of frost in the night—and then the maples stood glorious in scarlet and crimson, the birches and poplars shimmered in pale gold, the ash trees smouldered in dull purple, and the rowans flaunted their great bunches of waxy, orange-vermilion berries against the solid, dark-green background of hemlock and spruce. The partridge coveys whirred on strong wings across the glowing corridors of the forest, under a sky of sharp cobalt. For a day or two


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 every tree top was elusively vocal with the thin-drawn, single notes of the migrating cedar waxwings—notes which were mere tiny beads of sound. The ice which formed each night along the edges of the shallow pools floated away each morning before the unclouded sun was two hours high. And the air, stirred with light breezes, sparkling and rich with earth scents, was like wine in the veins of every creature alive. One night came a light sifting of snow, in gossamer flakes which vanished at the first touch of the sun. Then the breezes died away; the air, losing its crisp tang, grew balmy and languorous; the sharp blue of the sky veiled itself in a tender, opaline haze; the wilderness seemed to fall asleep, its silence broken only by the whispers of the falling leaves—and, once in a while, the startling chirr-rr-rr of a red squirrel. Life, for the moment, had taken on the tissue of a dream. It was the magic Indian Summer.

It passed, as it had come, in a night. Day broke steel-gray and menacing, with a bitter wind cutting down out of the North; and in a few hours everything was rigid with frost. Quills, though the cold in reahty had small terror for his hardy and warm-clad frame, had been disturbed and annoyed by the sudden change. It occurred to him that a warm and sheltered re-


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 treat, like his dimly remembered nest in the old maple, would be a better sleeping place than the draughty branches of a hemlock or a spruce. In this frame of mind he thought of a tempting looking hole which he had noticed, under a big boulder some fifty yards or so up the backwater. He knew that the hole belonged to an old dog fox, but the fact did not trouble him. His brain had only room for one idea at a time. He set out straight for that hole.

He had no idea whether the owner was at home or not, but he made no attempt to find out. By way of precaution, however, he turned round before entering and backed in, slashing vigorously with his spiked tail as he did so. The fox was not at home. Quills found the retreat dry and warm. So, having well breakfasted before leaving his tree, he settled down with his hind quarters to the entrance, and unconcernedly went to sleep.

Presently the fox came trotting home, intent on getting out of the wind and having a nap in his snug den. But just before the threshold he stopped short, the fur on his neck stood up, and his eyes went green. He had scented the trail of Quills—and it led straight into his lair. Stealthily he tiptoed forward, peered in—and saw confronting him that spiny tail and rump.


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 His blood boiled at the intruder's insolence. But he was a wise old beast; and in his rash youth he had once been lame for a month, through having tried to interfere with a most insignificant-looking porcupine. Curbing his righteous wrath—as there was nothing else to do—he turned about and with his scratching hind paws insultingly sent a shower of earth in upon the slumbering Quills. Then he trotted off. Quills, thus rudely awakened, crawled forth, chattering indignantly, and shook out the defilement from his long coat. But as the fox was nowhere in sight he promptly forgot his wrath, and turned into the den again to resume his nap.

Gradually, but inexorably, winter now closed down upon the valley of the Tobique. And it was a hard winter—for all the hunting beasts and birds, a desperate winter. The rabbits, that autumn, had been smitten with one of their periodical epidemics, and died off like flies. This did not trouble Quills directly—a strict vegetarian, he was assured of plenty so long as the forest stood. But indirectly it made a vital difference to him. All the prowling and pouncing kindred—the great horned owls and the eagles, the lynxes, foxes, martens, and minks soon found themselves goaded by such hunger as might at any moment drive them to take unwonted risks.


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 Quills little guessed how often, as he was gnawing complacently at his meal of hemlock bark, he would be watched longingly by savage and hungry eyes. But had he guessed it his indifference would have remained quite unruffled. He had all he could eat, and a warm hole to sleep in; and why should he borrow trouble?

But one biting December afternoon, Quills's complacency got something of a shock. Just as he was crawling luxuriously into his den, one of those great horned owls which are the feathered Apaches of the wilderness, came winnowing low overhead on wings as silent as sleep. His round, staring eyes caught sight of Quills's hind quarters, just vanishing into the hole. There was no time to note exactly what it was, and hunger had made the great bird rash even beyond his wont. He swooped instantly, and struck his terrible talons into the tail and haunch.

With a loud hiss, like that of an angry cat, he let go precipitately, and fairly bounced up into the air again, both murderous talons struck deep with spines which seemed to burn into his sinews. He flew in haste to the nearest branch, and set himself to the painful task of plucking out the torments with his beak, holding up first one claw and then the other. With some of the spines he was successful, but others he merely managed


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 to nip off close to the skin. For several weeks he could do no hunting for the fiery anguish in them, but could only sit moping in his hollow tree, where he would soon have starved but for the food brought to him by his faithful mate.

As for Quills, this was his first experience of physical pain. And it was his first taste of fear. Whining and squealing and grunting all at once, he shrank into his den, and carefully parting the spines and fur with his nose, strove to lick the wounds made by those steel-sharp talons. For a day or two he had no appetite and stayed sulking in the den. But the healthy flesh, being unpoisoned, soon healed, and Quills was himself again, except for a certain unaccustomed watchfulness. Even a malevolent—but to him harmless—little weasel, or a scouting mink, he would honor with his suspicions; and one day when a gigantic bull moose came and stood beneath the tree in which he was feeding, he arrayed all his defenses as if expecting immediate attack. But the huge, black beast did not even trouble to look at him, so his fears were soon allayed.

A porcupine's memory, however, seems to be extraordinarily short; and Quills's was no exception to the rule. When his wounds no longer pricked him to remembrance, he forgot all about the affair and recovered his old indifference. One


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 day when he was returning to his den for a doze—right into his pathway, with a noiseless pounce, dropped a great, gray, furry beast, with tufted ears, and long, white, snarling teeth, and huge pads of paws. It crouched before him, its stub of a tail twitching, and glared upon him with pale, cruel, moonlike eyes. Up went Quills's spines at once, and he ducked his nose between his forepaws, but he was determined to get to his den, so he came right on. Seeing, however, that the intruder showed no sign of getting out of the way. Quills suddenly turned around and came on backward, lashing out fiercely with his tail. The lynx was wild with hunger, but not to the pitch of suicidal recklessness. He ached Intolerably for the well-nourished flesh that he knew lay hidden beneath those bristling spines; but he knew the price that he would have to pay for it. With a screech of disappointed rage he slipped from the path, and Quills disappeared into his hole.

As the long and bitter winter drew on, Quills had many more or less similar encounters with the lynxes, and two with a surly old black bear. Paradoxical as the statement may appear, he usually faced the enemy with his tail. And the result was always the same. No prowler was prepared to pay the price which Quills would


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 have exacted for his carcass. But along in March, when the snow had begun to settle heavily under a week of thaw, Quills was confronted by a new enemy before whom his indifference melted more swiftly than the snow.

Very early one morning, when the first ghostgray light of dawn was beginning to glimmer through the windless forest, Quills had just come down out of an old hemlock when he caught sight of a strange beast gliding over the snow. The stranger, dark brown in color, with a bushy tail, long and low-set body, weasel-shaped head, and grizzly-gray face with black snout, was somewhat under three feet in length. It was distinctly smaller, and at first glance less dangerous-looking, than a lynx. But some inherited instinct told Quills at once that this was an enemy far more to be dreaded than the fiercest of lynxes. He had never seen a fisher before. Fortunately for the porcupine tribe, fishers were very scarce in the Valley of the Tobique. But a chill of ancestral fear struck to Quills's heart.

The fisher, catching sight of him, whirled in his tracks, and darted at him with a deadly intensity of purpose very different from the hesitating attitude of Quills's other foes. And Quills's tactics were now different. Jutting from the snow was a heavy windfall, its top supported


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 in the lower branches of a neighboring beech tree. Under this protection Quills thrust his nose and head, clear to the shoulders, leaving only his armed back and fiercely slashing tail exposed to the assault. He was no more in this position ere the enemy was upon him.

Now in nine cases out of ten—perhaps even in ninety-nine out of a hundred—the fight between a porcupine and a fisher has but one result. The fisher eats the porcupine. He is incomparably the stronger. He is, taking it all in all, the most savage, swift, and crafty of all the marauders of the wilderness. And above all else, the porcupine's quills, so deadly to others, have for him comparatively few terrors. They do not poison or inflame his flesh, which seems to possess the faculty of soon casting them forth again through the skin. All he has to do is to flip the victim over on its back—annexing as few spines as possible in the act—and he has the unprotected throat and belly at the mercy of his fangs.

In the present case, however, the too confident fisher had an exceptional porcupine to deal with. Quills was not only unusually large and vigorous, but, for a porcupine, sagacious. He had settled himself down solidly into the snow; and when the fisher, dodging a blow of his tail, and accepting


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 a sharp dose of spines in the shoulder, tried to turn him over with a twist of the paw, Quills resisted successfully, and with a timely swing of his haunches stabbed his assailant's whole flank full of spines.

The fisher had expected some resistance, some more or less futile defence, but this was attack. Always short in temper, he flew into a blind rage at the pain and the surprise of it. He stood back a few inches to gain impetus for the next effort, and this was his mistake—this, and underrating his opponent. At that very instant he got a full, flailing stroke across his face from Quills's tail. It filled his nose and mouth with spines—that was to be expected. But—for the blow had surely been guided by the patron spirit of all the porcupines—it also filled both his eyes.

With a screech of anguish he flung himself full on Quills's back and strove to bite down through the armor of the spines. But he was now totally blind. And his jaws were stuck so full of spines as to be practically powerless. Meanwhile his mad struggles were simply driving deeper and deeper into all his tender under parts those terrible four-inch spikes. All at once the agony grew too appalling for even his indomitable spirit. He lurched off, and dragged himself away, stumbing and staggering, till he


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 reached a thicket which he felt to be dense enough to hide his defeat. And here death came to him, none too soon.

For some minutes after his defeated foe had gone, Quills remained with his head thrust under the branch, chattering fierce defiance and lashing wildly with his tail. Then, very cautiously, he backed off and looked about him. His spines and fur were disheveled, and he was bleeding from some deep scratches where his assailant's claws had gone home. But he was not seriously the worse for his encounter—and he had beaten, overwhelmingly, the terrible killer of porcupines! His somber and solitary spirit glowed with triumph. Rather hurriedly he crawled on to his lair, and there set himself to a much-needed toilet. And outside his retreat the first long, level rays of the sunrise crept across the snow, touching the trunks of the birches and the poplars to a mystical rose-pink and saffron.


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NDER the first pale lilac wash of evening, just where the slow stream of the Lost Water slipped placidly from the open meadows into the osier and bulrush tangles of the swamp, a hermit thrush, perched in the topmost spray of a young elm tree, was fluting out his lonely and tranquil ecstasy to the last of the sunset. Spheral—spheral—oh—holy—holy—clear—he sang; and stopped abruptly, as if to let the brief, unfinished, but matchlessly pure and poignant cadence sink unjarred into the heart of the evening stillness. One minute—two minutes—went by; and the spaces of windless air were like a crystal tinged with faint violet. And then this most reticent of singers loosed again his few links of flawless sound—a strain which, more than any other bird song on this earth, leaves the hstener's heart aching exquisitely for its completion. Spheral—spheral—oh—holy—holy—but this time, as if seeking by further condensation to


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 make his attar of song still more rare and precious, he cut off the final note, that haunting, ethereal—clear.

Again the tranced stillness. But now, as if too far above reality to be permitted to endure, after a few seconds it was rudely broken. From somewhere in the mysterious and misty depths of the swamp came a great booming and yet strangulated voice, so dominant that the ineffable colors of the evening seemed to fade and the twilight to deepen suddenly under its somber vibrations. Three times it sounded—''Klunk-er-glungk. . . Klunk-er-glungk. . . Klunk-er-glunk''. . . an uncouth, mysterious sound, sonorous, and at the same time half-muffled, as if pumped with effort through obstructing waters. It was the late cry of the bittern, proclaiming that the day was done.

The hermit thrush, on his tree top against the pale sky, sang no more, but dropped noiselessly to his mate on her nest in the thickets. Two bats flickered and zigzagged hither and thither above the glimmering stream. And the leaf-scented dusk gathered down broodingly, with the dew, over the wide solitudes of Lost Water Swamp.

It was high morning in the heart of the swamp. From a sky of purest cobalt flecked sparsely with silver-white wisps of cloud, the sun glowed down


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 with tempered, fruitful warmth upon the tender green of the half-grown rushes and already rank water grasses—the young leafage of the alder and willow thickets—the wide pools and narrow, linking lanes of unruffled water already mantling in spots with lily pad and arrow weed. A few big red-and-black butterflies wavered aimlessly above the reed tops. Here and there, with a faint, elfin clashing of transparent wings, a dragon fly, a gleam of emerald and amethyst fire, flashed low over the water. From every thicket came a soft chatter of the nesting red-shouldered blackbirds.

And just in the watery fringe of the reeds, as brown and erect and motionless as a mooring stake, stood the bittern.

Not far short of three feet in length, from the tip of his long and powerful, dagger-pointed bill to the end of his short, rounded tail, with his fierce, unblinking eyes, round, bright, and hard, with his snaky head and long, muscular neck, he looked, as he was, the formidable master of the swamp. In coloring he was a streaked and freckled mixture of slaty greys and browns and ochres above, with a freckled, whitish throat and dull buff breast and belly—a mixture which would have made him conspicuous amid the cool, light green of the sedges but that it harmonized so


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 perfectly with the earth and the roots. Indeed, moveless as he stood, to the indiscriminating eye he might have passed for a decaying stump by the waterside. His long legs were of a dull olive which blended with the shadowy tones of the water.

For perhaps ten minutes the great bird stood there without the movement of so much as a feather, apparently unconcerned while the small inhabitants of the swamp made merry in the streaming sunshine. But his full, round eyes took In, without stirring in their sockets, all that went on about him, in air or sedge or water. Suddenly, and so swiftly that it seemed one motion, his neck uncoiled and his snaky head darted downward into the water near his feet, to rise again with an eight-inch chub partly transfixed and partly gripped between the twin daggers of his half-opened bill. Squirming, and shining silverly, it was held aloft, while its captor stalked solemnly in through the sedges to a bit of higher and drier turf. Here he proceeded to hammer his prize into stillness upon an old, half-buried log. Then, tossing it into the air, he caught it adroitly by the head, and swallowed it, his fierce eyes blinking with the effort as he slowly forced it down his capacious gullet. It was a satisfying meal, even for such a healthy appetite as his, and


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 he felt no immediate impulse to continue his fishing. Remaining where he was beside the old log, thigh deep in the young grasses and luxuriously soaking in the sunshine, he fell once more into a position of rigid movelessness. But his attitude was now quite different from that which he had affected when his mind was set on fish. His neck was coiled backward till the back of his head rested on his shoulders, and his bill pointed skyward, as if the only peril he had to consider seriously during his time of repose might come, if at all, from that direction. And though he rested, and every nerve and muscle seemed to sleep, his gemlike eyes were sleeplessly vigilant. Only at long intervals a thin, whitish membrane flickered down across them for a fraction of an mstant, to cleanse and lubricate them and keep their piercing brightness undimmed.

Once a brown marsh hawk, questing for water rats, winnowed past, only ten or a dozen feet above his head. But he never stirred a muscle. He knew it would be a much more formidable and daring marauder than the marsh hawk that would risk conclusions with the uplifted dagger of his bill.

In about half an hour—so swift is the digestion of these masters of the swamp—the bittern began to think about a return to his easy and


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 pleasant hunting. But, always deliberate, except when there was need for instant action, at first he did no more than uncoil his long neck, lower his bill to a level, and stand motionlessly staring over the sedge tops. One of the big red-and-black butterflies came wavering near, perhaps under the fatal delusion that that rigid yellow bill would be a good perch for him to alight on. A lightning swift dart of the snaky head, and those gay wings, after curiously adorning for a moment the tip of the yellow bill, were deftly gathered in and swallowed—an unsubstantial morsel, but not to be ignored when one is blest with a bittern's appetite.

After a few minutes more of statuesque deliberation, having detected nothing in the landscape particularly demanding his attention, the bittern lazily lifted his broad wings and flapped in slow flight, his long legs almost brushing the sedge tops, back to the post of vantage where he had captured the chub. As soon as he alighted he stiffened himself erect, and stared about as if to see whether his flight had been noticed. Then, presently, he seemed to remember something of importance. This was the season of mating joys and cares. It was time he signalled his brown mate. First he began snapping his bill sharply, and then he went through a number of contor-


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 tions with his throat and neck, as if he were trying to gulp down vast quantities of air, and finding the effort most difficult. At length, however, the painful-looking struggle was crowned with achievement. Once more, as on the preceding evening, that great call boomed forth across the swamp, sonorous yet strangulated, uncouth yet thrilling and haunting, the very voice of solitude and mystery—''Klunk-er-glungk. . . Klunk-er-glungk. . . Klunk-er-glungk.''

Almost immediately came an acknowledgment of this untuneful love song—a single hoarse guaw-awk, and another snaky, brown head and yellow dagger bill were raised above the tops of the sedges. The hen bittern, in response to her mate's cry, had just come off her nest.

For some tranquil moments the two eyed each other without stirring, and it almost seemed as if their very immobility was a mode of expression, a secret code for communication between them. The result, if so, appeared to be satisfactory. The hen came stalking solemnly through the grass and sedges toward the water's edge, only pausing on the way to transfix and gulp down a luckless frog. And the stately male, once more spreading his spacious vans, flapped slowly over and dropped again into the grass some ten or a dozen feet from the nest.


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 The nest was a rather casual structure of dry grass and weeds, in a hollow of the turf, and more or less concealed by leaning tufts of swamp grass. It contained three large eggs of a dull greenish buff, clouded with darker tones, and blending elusively with the soft colorings of the nest. These precious eggs the male bittern was to stand guard over with jealous vigilance, while his mate was away foraging. The sun was softly warm upon them through the thin shadows of the grass blades, and he knew they would not chill during her brief absence. He took his post just near enough to keep his eye upon the nest, without unduly drawing attention to its hiding place.

This patch of water meadow, perhaps a half acre in extent, on which the bitterns had their nest, was one of many such tiny islands scattered amid the interlacing channels of Lost Water Swamp. It formed a congenial refuge for all that small life of the wilderness which loves to be near water without being in it. It was particularly beloved of the meadow mice, because the surrounding watercourses and morasses were an effectual barrier to some of their worst enemies, such as foxes, skunks, and weasels; and they throve here amazingly. To be sure the bittern would take toll of them when they came his way, but he did not deliberately hunt them, rather pre-


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 ferring a diet of frogs and fish; and moreover his depredations upon the mice were more than counterbalanced by his eager hostility to their dreaded foes, the snakes. So, on the whole, he might have been regarded by the mouse community as a benefactor, though a rather costly one.

Even now, as he stood there apparently thinking of nothing but his guardianship of the nest, he gave a telling example of his beneficence in this regard. There was a tiny, frightened squeak, a desperate small rustling in the grass stems, and a terrified mouse scurried by, with a two-foot black snake at its tail. The bittern's head flashed down, unerringly, and rose again, more slowly, with the snake gripped by the middle, held high in air, as if on exhibition, between the knife-edge tips of that deadly, yellow bill. The victim writhed and twisted, coiling itself convulsively around its captor's head and neck. But with two or three sharp jerks it was drawn further back, toward the base of the mandibles; and then, with an inexorable pressure, bitten clean in two; the halves uncoiled and fell to the ground, still wriggling spasmodically. With grave deliberation the bittern planted one foot upon the head half, and demolished the vicious head with a tap of his bill. This done, he swallowed it with


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 determined and strenuous gulpings. Then he eyed the other half doubtfully, and decided that he was not yet ready for it. So, placing one foot upon it with a precise air, he lifted his head again and resumed his motionless guarding of the nest.

A little later in the morning—perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes after the incident of the snake—the mice found yet another potent reason for congratulating themselves on the presence of their expensive champion. The hen bittern, apparently, had not been very successful in her foraging. She had shown as yet no sign of returning to the nest. The male was just beginning to get impatient. He even went so far as to move his head, though ever so slightly. Indeed, he was on the very point of beginning those grotesque snappings of the bill and gulpings of air which would be followed by his booming triple call when he caught sight of a dark form moving through the grass, beyond the nest. Instantly he stiffened again into rigidity. Only, very slowly, the long, slender feathers which crowned his head and lay along his neck began to rise.

The dark form gliding stealthily among the grasses was that of an animal about two feet in length, low on the legs, slender, sinuous, quickdarting. The bittern had never chanced to observe a mink before, but he needed no one to tell


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 him that this creature was dangerous. Ferocity and efficiency were written all over the savage, triangular head and lithe, swift body. But the intruder had evidently not yet discovered the precious nest. He was half a dozen paces away from it, and not moving directly toward it. In the very next moment he pounced upon a mouse, which he tore and devoured with an eagerness which showed him to be hungry. The bittern waited, and hoped anxiously that the nest might escape discovery.

The mink was not at the moment thinking of any such luxury as eggs. He had entered the swamp in the hope of finding just such a happy hunting ground as this bit of mouse-thronged meadow. He had just arrived, and he was now full of bloodthirsty excitement over the success of his venture. His nose sniffed greedily the subtle, warm, mousy smells. His ears detected the innumerable, elusive, mousy squeaks and rustlings. His eyes, lit now with the red spark of the blood lust, were less fortunate than his ears and nose, because word of a new and dreadful foe had gone abroad among the mouse folk, and concealment was the order of the day. But already, he had made one kill—and that so easily that he knew the quarry here was not much hunted.


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 He was preparing to follow a very distinct mouse trail, when a chance puff of air bore him a scent which instantly caught his attention. The scent of the bittern was new to him, as it chanced. He knew it for the scent of a bird, a water bird of some kind—probably, from its abundance, a large bird, and certainly, therefore, a bird worth his hunting.

Curious and inquiring, he rose straight up on his hind quarters in order to get a good view, and peered searchingly over the grass tops. He saw nothing but the green and sun-steeped meadow with the red-and-black butterflies wavering over it, the gleam of the unruffled water, and the osier thickets beyond. He looked directly at, and past, the guardian bittern, probably mistaking that rigid, vigilant shape for an old brown stump. For the mink's eyes, like those of many other animals, were less unerring than his ears and nostrils, and much quicker to discern motion than fixed form. Had the bittern stirred by so much as a hair's breadth, the mink would have detected him at once. But the mink looked at him and saw him not; nor saw another similar form, unstirring, tensely watchful, over by the waterside.

Having failed to detect the source of that strange, intriguing smell, the mink concluded that it must come from a brooding mother, hiding on


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 a nest in the grass. Nothing could be more satisfactory. His eyes blazed blood-red at the prospect of slaughter. Dropping down again upon all fours, he darted forward up the trail of the scent, and came full upon the nest with its three unsheltered eggs. Instantly seizing the nearest one between his agile forepaws, he crunched the shell and began greedily sucking up the contents.

But the savor of the feast had hardly thrilled his palate when it seemed as if the skies had fallen upon him. A scalding anguish stabbed his shoulders, a smother of buffeting wings enveloped him, and he was borne backward from the nest, the broken eggshell still clinging to his nose.

At the moment when he had darted forward toward the nest, all the immobility of the watching bittern had vanished. His long crest standing straight up in his fury, he had launched himself to the attack, covering the intervening distance with two tremendous thrusts of his powerful wings, and fallen like a cyclone upon the violator of his home. The dagger of his bill had struck deeply, and the impetus of his charge had carried him clear of his foe and a couple of paces past, but he turned adroitly in the air and landed facing about, ready for the inevitable counterattack.

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 ence, the mink was in no way daunted. Rather he was so boiling with rage that his wonted wariness forsook him completely. With a snarl he sprang straight at the long, exposed, inviting throat of his adversary. His leap was swift, true, deadly. But equally true, and more swift, was the counterstroke. He was met, and stopped in mid-air by a thrust of the bittern's bill, which, had he not twisted his head just in time, would have split his skull. As it was, it laid open one side of his snarling face, and brought him heavily to the ground. Even under this punishment, however, he would not acknowledge defeat. Springing aside, with a lightning, zigzag movement to confuse the aim of that terrific bill, he darted low and made a leap at his antagonist's long, vulnerable legs. He missed only by a hair's breadth, as the bittern leapt nimbly aside and balked him with a stiff wing stroke. He seized the baffling wing and strove to pull his tall adversary down. But two great pinion feathers came away in his jaws, and the next moment he got another terrible, driving stab from the dagger beak, well forward on the flank. It was a slanting thrust, or it would have pierced his lungs; but it nearly knocked the wind out of him, and ploughed a deep, red gash in his glossy coat.


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 Screeching furiously, he doubled on himself like a snake to meet this attack. But at the same moment he cringed under another excruciating stab in the haunch; and looking up, he saw himself enveloped in a cloud of blinding wings. The hen bittern had arrived to join in the defense of her nest.

Now, bloodthirsty and merciless marauder though he was, the mink's courage was a thing beyond dispute; and terribly though the fight had so far gone against him, with a single foe to confront he would probably have held on to the death. But for all his fury he was not quite mad; and this reinforcement of the enemy was too much for him. Suddenly straightening himself out long and narrow like an eel, he slipped from under the terrifying storm, of wings and stabs, and made off through the grass at the best speed he had ever attained. He made for the water, which he felt would be his safest refuge. The angry bitterns were after him on the instant, flying as low as possible and stabbing down at him. But his cunning and slippery zigzags enabled him to dodge most of their thrusts; and in their eagerness they got in each other's way—which probably saved him his bare life. At length streaming with blood, and leaving behind him a red trail he reached the water and dived in. Without daring


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 to come to the surface he swam across the channel and cautiously raised his head behind a screen of overhanging weeds. He saw his two pursuers standing, motionless and erect, on the opposite bank, watching with fierce eyes for him to reappear. Submerging himself again, he swam on downstream till he had rounded a sharp bend of the channel. When he thought it prudent to show himself once more, he was sheltered by a dense screen of alder and willows. He hurried through the thicket, and on down the bank till he found an ancient muskrat hole. Into this he crept eagerly, and lay down in the grateful dark to nurse his wounds and his humiliation.

After the disappearance of the mink the hen bittern soon returned to her nest. But the male stayed where he was. From time to time he would spear a passing frog or chub or sucker. But always his indignant heart was hoping that the mink would return. After an hour or two, however, his wrath died down and he began to forget.

Later in the day, when the osiers were beginning to throw long shadows across the water, and the red-and-black butterflies had grown too indolent to dance, the great bittern, full-fed and at ease with life, flapped languidly up from the waterside and dropped close beside the nest. His


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 brooding mate lifted her head, as if in greeting, and laid it back at once between her shoulders, with her yellow bill pointed skyward as was her vigilant custom.

Soon the first warm tints of sunset began to stain the edges of the clouds above the far fringes of the swamp. Motionless and erect beside his mate, the bittern watched the oncoming of the enchantment as his day drew to its quiet close. Suddenly the colored quiet of the air was disturbed by the throbbing of hurried wings. He glanced upward, without moving. A mallard drake, in frantic flight, whirred past, making for the water. Close after the fugitive, and swiftly overhauling him with long tremendous thrusts of his mighty wings, came that most dreaded cut-throat of the air, a great, blue goshawk. Had the water been two feet farther away the fate of the glossy drake would have been sealed. He would have been overtaken, his throat torn out in mid-air, his body carried off to the nearest tree top to be plucked and devoured. But this time the inscrutable Fates of the wilderness, too seldom so lenient to the weak, decided to favor him. With a heavy sounding splash he shot down into the blessed water, and disappeared into safety.

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 clutched convulsively at the dandy curled tips of his tail as he vanished.

With his arrowy speed, his precision of stroke, his audacity and fiery spirit, the blue goshawk was little accustomed to the experience of being balked of his prey. With a sharp yelp of wrath he swept up from the water on a long, graceful curve, and sailed back low above the bittern's island seeking other prey. And his piercing gaze fell upon the bittern, standing rigid beside the nest.

His swoop was instantaneous, straight and swift as a bolt from a crossbow. But that coiled steel spring of the bittern's neck was even swifter; and as his talons struck downward, the bittern's dagger thrust caught him in the very center of the impending claw, splitting the foot fairly and disabling it. Nevertheless, by the shock of the attack, the bittern was borne downward, and would have been caught in the breast or throat by the other talon, but at the same instant his watchful mate, who had half risen on the nest that her eggs might not be crushed in the mêlée, delivered her thrust. It went true. It caught the goshawk full in the base of the neck, pierced clean through, and severed the spine. And in a wild confusion of sprawled legs and pounding wings, the three great birds fell in a heap in the grass, just beyond the nest.


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 The two bitterns nimbly extricated themselves, stabbing savagely at the unresisting body of the hawk. Presently, as if by one impulse, they both stood up, erect and still as images, their yellow bills dripping with blood. The male had a bleeding gash along the side of his head. But this concerned him little. His heart swelled with triumph. He was forced to give it utterance. He snapped his bill sharply, gulped a few mouthfuls of air, and then sent forth his booming challenge across the swamp—''Klunk-er-glungk. . . Klunk-er-glungk. . . Klunk-er-glungk.''

His mate spread her broad wings, shook herself till her ruffled plumage fell into place, wiped her conquering bill on the grass, stepped delicately back into the nest, and softly settled herself down upon her two eggs, so miraculously preserved.

Silence fell on Lost Water Swamp. The air became gradually transfused with amethyst and pale rose. And then, far and faint, tranquil and poignant, came the entrancing cadence—Oh—spheral, spheral, Oh holy, holy—spheral—the silver vesper ecastasyecstasy [sic] of the hermit thrush, in his tree top against the pellucid sky.


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T was in the very heart of the ancient wood—the forest primeval of the north, gloomy with the dark-green, crowded ranks of fir and spruce and hemlock, and tangled with the huge windfalls of countless storm-torn winters. But now, at high noon of the glowing northern summer, the gloom was pierced to its depths with shafts of radiant sun; the barred and checkered transparent brown shadows hummed with dancing flies; the warm air was alive with the small, thin notes of chick-a-dee and nuthatch, varied now and then by the impertinent scolding of the Canada jay; and the drowsing tree tops steamed up an incense of balsamy fragrance in the heat. The ancient wildness dreamed, stretched itself all open to the sun, and seemed to sigh with immeasurable content.

High up in the grey trunk of a half-dead forest giant was a round hole, the entrance to what had been the nest of a pair of big, red-headed, golden


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 winged woodpeckers, or "yellow hammers." The big woodpeckers had long since been dispossessed—the female, probably, caught and devoured, with her eggs, upon the nest. The dispossessor, and present tenant, was Mustela.

Framed in the blackness of the round hole was a sharp-muzzled, triangular, golden-brown face with high, pointed ears, looking out upon the world below with keen eyes in which a savage wildness and an alert curiosity were incongruously mingled. Nothing that went on upon the dim ground far below, among the tangled trunks and windfalls, or in the sun-drenched tree tops, escaped that restless and piercing gaze. But Mustela had fed well and felt lazy, and this hour of noon was not his hunting hour; so the most unsuspecting red squirrel, gathering cones in a neighboring pine, was insufficient to lure him from his rest, and the plumpest hare, waving its long, suspicious ears down among ground shadows, only made him lick his lips and think what he would do later on in the afternoon, when he felt like it.

Presently, however, a figure came into view at sight of which Mustela's expression changed. His thin, black lips wrinkled back in a soundless snarl, displaying the full length of his long, snow-white, deadly sharp canines, and a red spark of hate


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 smoldered in his bright eyes. But no less than his hate was his curiosity—a curiosity which is the most dangerous weakness of all Mustela's tribe. Mustela's pointed head stretched itself clear of the hole, in order to get a better look at the man who was passing below his tree.

A man was a rare sight in that remote and inaccessible section of the northern wilderness. This particular man—a woodsman, a "timber cruiser," seeking out new and profitable areas for the work of the lumbermen—wore a flaming red-and-orange handkerchief loosely knotted about his brawny neck, and carried over his shoulder an axe whose bright blade flashed sharply whenever a ray of sunlight struck it. It was this flashing axe, and the blazing color of the scarlet-and-orange kerchief, that excited Mustela's curiosity—so excited it, indeed, that he came clean out of the hole and circled the great trunk, clinging close and wide-legged like a squirrel, in order to keep the woodsman in view as he passed by.

Engrossed though he was in the interesting figure of the man, Mustela's vigilance was still unsleeping. His amazingly quick ears, at this moment, caught a hushed hissing of wings in the air above his head. He did not stop to look up and investigate. Like a streak of ruddy light he flashed around the trunk and whisked back into


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 his hole—and just as he vanished a magnificent, long-winged goshawk, the king of all the falcons, swooping down from the blue, struck savagely with his clutching talons at the edge of the hole.

The quickness of Mustela was miraculous. Moreover, he was not content with escape. He wanted vengeance. Even in his lightning dive into his refuge he had managed to turn about, doubling on himself like an eel. And now, as those terrible talons gripped and clung for half a second to the edge of the hole, he snapped his teeth securely into the last joint of the longest talon, and dragged it in an inch or two.

With a yelp of fury and surprise the great falcon strove to lift himself into the air, pounding madly with his splendid wings, and twisting himself about, and thrusting mightily with his free foot against the side of the hole. But he found himself held fast, as in a trap. Sagging back with all his weight, Mustela braced himself securely with all four feet and hung on, his whipcord sinews set like steel. He knew that if he let go for an instant to secure a better mouthful his enemy would escape; so he just worried and chewed at the joint of the huge talon, satisfied with the punishment he was inflicting.

Meanwhile the woodsman, his attention drawn


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 by that one sudden yelp of the falcon and by the prolonged and violent buffeting of wings, had turned back to see what was going on. Pausing at the foot of Mustela's tree he peered upward with narrowed eyes. A slow smile wrinkled his weather-beaten face. He did not like hawks. For a moment or two he stood wondering what it was in the hole that could hold so powerful a bird. Whatever it was, he stood for it.

Being a dead shot with the revolver, he seldom troubled to carry a rifle in his "cruisings." Drawing his long barreled "Smith and Wesson" from his belt he took careful aim, and fired. At the sound of the shot the thing in the hole was startled, and let go; and the great bird, turning once over slowly in the air, dropped to his feet with a feathery thud, its talons still contracting shudderingly. The woodsman glanced up—and there, framed in the dark of the hole, was the little, yellow face of Mustela, insatiably curious, snarling down upon him viciously.

"Gee," muttered the woodsman, "I might hev' knowed it was one o' them bloody martens! Nobody else o' that size 'ud hev' the gall to tackle a duck hawk!"

Now the fur of Mustela, the pine marten or American sable, is a fur of price. But the woodsman—subject, like most of his kind, to unexpected


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 attacks of sentiment and imagination—felt that to shoot the defiant fighter would be like an act of treachery to an ally.

"Ye're a pretty fighter, Sonny," said he, with a whimsical grin, "an' ye may keep that yellow pelt o' yourn, for all o' me!"

Then he picked up the dead falcon, tied its claws together, slung it upon his axe, and strode through the trees. He wanted to keep those splendid wings as a present for his girl at the settlements.

Highly satisfied with his victory over the mighty falcon—for which he took the full credit to himself—Mustela now retired to the bottom of his comfortable, moss-lined nest, and curled himself up to sleep away the heat of the day. As the heat grew sultrier and drowsier through the still hours of early afternoon, there fell upon the forest a heavy silence, deepened rather than broken by the faint hum of the heat-loving flies. And the spicy scents of pine and spruce and tamarack steamed forth richly upon the moveless air.

When the shadows of the trunks began to lengthen, Mustela woke up. And he woke up hungry. Slipping out of his hole he ran a little way down the trunk and then leaped, lightly and nimbly as a squirrel, into the branches of a big hemlock which grew close to his own tree. Here,


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 in a crotch from which he commanded a good view beneath the foliage, he halted and stood motionless, peering about him for some sign of a likely quarry.

Poised thus, tense, erect, and vigilant, Mustela was a picture of beauty, swift and fierce. In color he was of a rich golden brown, with a patch of brilliant yellow covering throat and chest. His tail was long and bushy, to serve him as a balance in his long, squirrel-like leaps from tree to tree. His pointed ears were large and alert, to catch all the faint, elusive, forest sounds. In length, being a specially fine specimen of his kind, he was perhaps a couple of inches over two feet. His body had all the lithe grace of a weasel, with something of the strength of his great cousin and most dreaded foe, the fisher.

For a time nothing stirred. Then from a distance, came faint but shrill the chirr-r-r-r of a red squirrel. Mustela's discriminating ear located the sound at once. All energy on the instant, he darted toward it springing from branch to branch with amazing speed and noiselessness.

The squirrel, noisy and imprudent after the manner of his tribe, was chattering fussily and bouncing about on his branch, excited over something best known to himself, when a darting, gold-brown shape of doom landed upon the end of the


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 branch, not half a dozen feet from him. With a screech of warning and terror he bounded into the air, alighted on the trunk, and raced up it, with Mustela close upon his heels. Swift as he was—and everyone who has seen a red squirrel in a hurry knows how he can move—Mustela was swifter; and in about five seconds the little chatterer's fate would have been sealed. But he knew what he was about. This was his own tree. Had it been otherwise, he would have sprung into another and directed his desperate flight over the slenderest branches, where his enemy's greater weight would be a hindrance. As it was, he managed to gain his hole—just in time. And all that Mustela got was a little mouthful of fur from the tip of that vanishing red tail.

Very angry and disappointed, and hissing like a cat, Mustela jammed his savage face into the hole. He could see the squirrel crouched, with pounding heart and panic-stricken eyes, a few inches below him, just out of his reach. The hole was too small to admit his head. In a rage he tore at the edges with his powerful claws, but the wood was too hard for him to make any impression on it; and after half a minute of futile scratching he gave up in disgust and raced off down the tree. A moment later the squirrel


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 poked his head out and shrieked an effectual warning to every creature within earshot.

With that loud alarm shrilling in his ears, Mustela knew there would be no successful hunting for him till he could put himself beyond range of it. He raced on, therefore, abashed by his failure, till the taunting sound faded in the distance. Then his bushy, brown brush went up in the air again, and his wonted look of insolent self-confidence returned. As it did not seem to be his lucky day for squirrels, he descended to earth and began quartering the ground for the fresh trail of a rabbit.

In that section of the forest where Mustela now found himself the dark and scented tangle of spruce and balsam fir was broken by patches of stony barren, clothed unevenly by thickets of stunted white birch, and silver-leafed, quaking aspen, and wild sumach with its massive tufts of acrid, dark-crimson bloom. Here the rabbit trails were abundant, and Mustela was not long in finding one fresh enough to offer him the prospect of a speedy kill. Swiftly and silently, nose to earth, he set himself to follow its intricate and apparently aimless windings, sure that he would come upon a rabbit at the end of it.

As it chanced, however, he never came to the end of that particular trail or set his teeth in the


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 throat of that particular rabbit. In gliding past a bushy, young fir tree he happened to glance beneath it, and marked another of his tribe tearing the feathers from a newly slain grouse. The stranger was smaller and slighter than himself, a young female—quite possibly, indeed, his mate of a few months earlier in the season. Such considerations were less than nothing to Mustela, whose ferocious spirit knew neither gallantry, chivalry, nor mercy. With what seemed a single flashing leap he was upon her. Or almost—for the slim female was no longer there. She had bounded away as lightly and instantaneously as if blown by the wind of his coming. She knew Mustela—and she knew it would be death to stay and do battle for her kill. Spitting with rage and fear she fled from the spot, terrified lest he should pursue her and find the nest where her six precious kittens were concealed.

But Mustela was too hungry to be interested, just then, in mere slaughter for its own sake. He was feeling serious and practical. The grouse was a full-grown cock, plump and juicy, and when Mustela had devoured it his appetite was sated. But not so his blood lust. After a hasty toilet he set out again, looking for something to kill.

Crossing the belt of rocky ground he emerged upon a flat tract of treeless barren covered with


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 a dense growth of blueberry bushes about a foot in height. The bushes at this season were loaded with ripe fruit, of a bright blue color; and squatting among them was a big, black bear, enjoying the banquet at his ease. Gathering the berries together wholesale with his great, furry paws he was cramming them into his mouth greedily, with little grunts and gurgles of delight; and the juicy fragments with which his snout and jaws were smeared gave his formidable face an absurdly childish look. To Mustela—when that insolent little animal flashed before him—he vouchsafed no more than a glance of good-natured contempt. For the rank and stringy flesh of a pine marten he had no use at any time of year, least of all in the season when the blueberries were ripe.

Mustela, however, was too discreet to pass within reach of one of those huge but nimble paws, lest the happy bear should grow playful under the stimulus of the blueberry juice. He turned aside to a judicious distance; and there, sitting up on his hind quarters like a rabbit, he proceeded to nibble, rather superciliously, a few of the choicest berries. He was not enthusiastic over vegetable food. But, just as a cat will now and then eat grass, he liked at times a little change in his unvarying diet of flesh.


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 Having soon had enough of the blueberry patch, Mustela left it to the bear, and turned back toward the deep of the forest, where he felt most at home. He went stealthily, following up the wind in order that his scent might not give warning of his approach. It was getting near sunset by this time, and floods of pinky gold, washing across the open barrens, poured in along the ancient corridors of the forest, touching the somber trunks with stains of tenderest rose. In this glowing color Mustela, with his ruddy fur, moved almost invisible.

And so moving, he came plump upon a big buck rabbit, squatting half asleep in the center of a clump of pale-green fern.

The rabbit bounded straight into the air, his big, childish eyes popping from his head with horror. Mustela's leap was equally instantaneous. And it was unerring. He struck his victim in mid-air, and his fangs met deep in the rabbit's throat. With a scream the rabbit fell backward and came down with a muffled thump upon the ferns, with Mustela on top of him. There was a brief, thrashing struggle; and then Mustela, his forepaws upon the breast of his still-quivering prey (several times larger and heavier than himself), lifted his blood-stained face and stared about him savagely, as if defying all the other prowlers of


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 the forest to come and try to rob him of his prize.

Having eaten his fill, Mustela dragged the remnants of the carcass under a thick bush, defiled it so as to make it distasteful to other eaters of flesh, and scratched a lot of dead leaves and twigs over it till it was effectually hidden. As game was abundant at this season, and as he always preferred a fresh kill, he was not likely to want any more of that victim; but he hated the thought of any rival profiting from his prowess.

Mustela now turned his steps homeward, traveling more lazily, but with eyes, nose, and ears ever on the alert for fresh quarry. Though his appetite was sated for some hours, he was as eager as ever for the hunt, for the fierce joy of killing and taste of the hot blood. But the Unseen Powers of the Wilderness, ironic and impartial, decided just then that it was time for Mustela to he hunted in his turn.

If there was one creature above all others who could strike the fear of death into Mustela's merciless soul it was his great cousin, the ferocious and implacable fisher. Of twice his weight and thrice his strength, and his full petr in swiftness and cunning, the fisher was Mustela's nightmare, from whom there was no escape except in the depth of some hole too narrow for the fisher's


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 powerful shoulders to get into. And at this moment—there was the fisher's grinning, blackmuzzled mask crouched in the path before him, eyeing him with the sneer of certain triumph.

Mustela's heart jumped into his throat, as he flashed about and fled for his life—straight away, alas, from his safe hole in the tree top. And with the lightning dart of a striking rattler the fisher was after him.

Mustela had a start of perhaps twenty paces, and for a time he held his own. He dared no tricks, lest he should lose ground, for he knew his foe was as swift and as cunning as himself. Rut he knew himself stronger and more enduring than most of his tribe, and therefore he put his hope, for the most part, in his endurance. Moreover, there was always a chance that he might come upon some hole or crevice too narrow for his pursuer. Indeed, to a tough and indomitable spirit like Mustela's, until his enemy's fangs should finally lock themselves in his throat, there would always seem to be a chance. On and on he raced, therefore, tearing madly up or down the long, sloping trunks of ancient windfalls, springing in great, airy leaps from trunk to rock, from rock to overhanging branch, in silence; and ever at his heels followed the relentless, grinning shape of his pursuer, gaining a little in the long


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 leaps, but losing a little in the denser thickets, and so just about keeping his distance.

For all Mustela's endurance, the end of that race, in all probability, would have been for him but one swift, screeching fight, and then the dark. But at this juncture the Fates woke up and remembered some grudge against the fisher.

A moment later Mustela, just launching himself on a desperate leap, beheld in his path a huge hornets' nest suspended from a branch near the ground. Well he knew, and respected, that terrible insect, the great, black hornet with the cream-white stripes about its body. But it was too late to turn aside. He crashed against the grey, papery sphere, tearing it from its cables, and flashed on, with half a dozen white-hot stings in his hind quarters. Swerving slightly he dashed through a dense thicket hoping not only to scrape his fiery tormentors off but at the same time to gain a little on his big pursuer.

The fisher was at this stage not more than a dozen paces in the rear. He arrived, to his undoing, just as the outraged hornets poured out in a furiously humming swarm from their overturned nest. With deadly unanimity they pounced upon the fisher.

With a startled screech the fisher bounced aside and plunged for shelter. But he was too late.


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 The great hornets were all over him. His ears and nostrils were black with them. His eyes, shut tight, were already a flaming anguish with the corroding poison of their stings. Frantically he burrowed his face into the moist earth; and madly he clawed at his ears, crushing scores of his tormentors. But he could not crush out the venom which their long stings had injected. Finding it hopeless to free himself from their swarms he tore madly through the underbrush—but blindly, crashing into trunks and rocks, heedless of everything but the fiery torture which enveloped him. Gradually the hornets fell away from him as he went, knowing that their vengeance was accomplished. At last, groping his way blindly into a crevice between two rocks, he thrust his head down into the moss; and there, a few days later, his swollen body was found by a foraging lynx. The lynx was hungry, but she only sniffed at the carcass and turned away with a growl of disappointment and suspicion.

Mustela became aware, after some minutes, that he was no longer pursued. Incredulous at first, he at length came to the conclusion that the fisher had been discouraged by his superior speed and endurance. His heart swelled with triumph. By way of precaution he made a long detour to come back to his nest, ran up his tree and shpped


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 comfortably into his hole, and curled up to sleep with the feeling of a day well spent. He had fed full, he had robbed his fellows successfully, he had drunk the blood of his victims, he had outwitted or eluded his enemies.

Now as the summer waned, and the first keen touch of autumn set the wilderness aflame with the scarlet of maple and sumach, Mustela, for all his abounding health and prosperous hunting, grew restless with a discontent which he could not understand. Of the coming winter he had no dread. He had passed through several winters, faring well and finding that deep nest of his in the old tree a snug refuge from the fiercest storms. But now, he knew not why, the nest grew irksome to him, and his familiar hunting grounds distasteful. Even the eager hunt, the triumphant kill itself, had lost their zest. He forgot to kill except when he was hungry. A strange fever was in his blood, a lust for wandering. And so, one wistful, softly glowing day of Indian summer, when the violet light that bathed the forest was full of mystery and allurement, he set off on a journey. He had no thought of why he was going, or whither. When hungry, he stopped to hunt and kill and feed. But he no longer cared to conceal the remnants of his kills, for he dimly realized that he would not


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 be returning. If running waters crossed his path, he swam them. If broad lakes intervened, he skirted them.

From time to time he became aware that others of his kind were moving with him—but each one furtive, silent, solitary, self-sufficing, like himself. He heeded them not, nor they him; but all, impelled by one urge which could but be blindly obeyed, kept drifting onward toward the west and north. At length, when the first snows began, Mustela stopped, in a forest not greatly different from that which he had left, but even wilder, denser, more unvisited by the foot of man. And here, the wanderlust having suddenly left his blood, he found himself a new hole, lined it warm with moss and dry grasses, and resumed his hunting with all the ancient zest.

Back in Mustela's old hunting grounds a lonely trapper, finding no more golden sable in his snares, but only mink and lynx and fox, grumbled regretfully:

"The martens hev quit. We'll see no more of 'em round these parts for another ten year."

But he had no notion why they had quit; nor had anyone else—not even Mustela himself.


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HE lake lay in a deep and sun-soaked valley, facing south, sheltered from the sea winds by a high hogback of dark green spruce and hemlock forest, broken sharply here and there by outcroppings of white granite.

Beyond the hogback, some three or four miles away, the green sea screamed and thundered in sleepless turmoil against the towering black cliffs, clamorous with sea gulls. But over the lake brooded a blue and glittering silence, broken only, at long intervals, by the long-drawn, wistful flute cry of the Canada white-throat from some solitary tree top—Lean—lean—lean-to-me—lean-to-me—lean-to-me—of all bird voices the one most poignant with loneliness and longing.

On the side of the lake nearest to the hogback the dark green of the forest came down to within forty or fifty paces of the water's edge, and was fringed by a narrow ribbon of very light, tender green—a dense, low growth of Indian willow, elder shrub, and withewood, tangled with white


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 clematis and starred with wild convolvulus. From the sharply defined edge of this gracious tangle a beach of clean sand, dazzlingly white, sloped down to, and slid beneath, the transparent golden lip of the amber-tinted water. The sand, both below and above the water's edge, was of an amazing radiance. Being formed by the infinitely slow breaking down of the ancient granite, through ages of alternating suns and rains and heats and frosts, it consisted purely of the indestructible, coarse, white crystals of the quartz, whose facets caught the sun like a drift of diamonds.

The opposite shores of the lake were low and swampy, studded here and there with tall, naked, weather-bleached "rampikes"—the trunks of ancient fir trees blasted and stripped by some longpast forest fire. These melancholy ghosts of trees rose from a riotously gold-green carpet of rank marsh grasses, sweeping around in an interminable, unbroken curve to the foot of the lake, where, through the cool shadows of water ash and balsam poplar, the trout-haunted outlet stream rippled away musically to join the sea some seven or eight miles farther on. All along the golden-green sweep of the marsh grass spread acre upon acre of the flat leaves of the water lily, starred with broad, white, golden-hearted, ex-


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 quisitely perfumed blooms, the paradise of the wild bees and honey-loving summer flies.

Over this vast crystal bowl of green and amber solitude domed a sky of cloudless blue; and high in the blue hung a great bird, slowly wheeling. From his height he held in view the intense sparkling of the sea beyond the hogback, the creaming of the surf about the outer rocks, and the sudden upspringing of the gulls, like a puff of blown petals, as some wave, higher and more impetuous than its predecessors, drove them from their perches. But the aerial watcher had heed only for the lake below him, lying windless and unshadowed in the sun. His piercing eyes, jewel-bright, and with an amazing range of vision, could penetrate to all the varying depths of the lake, and detect the movements of its finny hordes. The great, sluggish lake trout, or "togue," usually lurking in the obscurest deeps; the shining, active, vermilion-spotted brook trout, foraging voraciously nearer the shore and the surface; the fat, mud-loving "suckers," rooting the oozy bottom like pigs among the roots of the water Hlies; the silvery chub and the green-and-gold, fiercely spined perch haunting the weedy feeding grounds down toward the outlet—all these he observed, and differentiated with an expert's eye, attempting to foresee which ones, in their feeding or their


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 play, were likely soonest to approach the surface of their glimmering, golden world.

Suddenly he paused in his slow wheeling, dipped forward, and dropped, with narrowed wings, down, down from his dizzy height to within something like fifty yards of the water. Here he stopped, with wings widespread, and hovered, almost motionless, slowly sinking like a waft of thistle down when the breeze has died away. He had seen a fair-sized trout rise lightly and suck in a fly which had fallen on the bright surface. The ringed ripples of the rise had hardly smoothed away when the trout rose again. As it gulped its tiny, half-drowned prey the poised bird shot downward again—urged by a powerful surge of his wings before he closed them—this time with terrific speed. He struck the water with a resounding splash, disappeared beneath it, and rose again two or three yards beyond with the trout securely gripped in his talons. Shaking the bright drops in a shower from his wings he flapped hurriedly away with his capture to his nest on the steep slope of the hogback. He flew with eager haste, as fast as his broad wings could carry him; for he feared lest his one dreaded foe, the great, white-headed eagle, should swoop down out of space on hissing pinions and rob him of his prize.


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 The nest of the osprey was built in the crotch of an old, lightning-blasted pine which rose from a fissure in the granite about fifty feet above the lake. As the osprey had practically no foes to be dreaded except that tyrannical robber, the great, white-headed eagle—which, indeed, only cared to rob him of his fish and never dared drive him to extremities by appearing to threaten his precious nestlings—the nest was built without any pretense of concealment, or, indeed, any attempt at inaccessibility, save such as was afforded by the high, smooth, naked trunk which supported it. An immense, gray, weather-beaten structure, conspicuous for miles, it looked like a loose cartload of rubbish, but in reality the sticks and dried rushes and mud and strips of shredded bark of which it was built were so solidly and cunningly interwoven as to withstand the wildest of winter gales. It was his permanent summer home, to which he and his handsome, daring mate were wont to return each spring from their winter sojourn in the sun lands of the south. A little tidying up, a little patching with sticks and mud, a relining with feathers and soft, winter-withered grasses, and the old nest was quickly ready to receive the eggs of his mate—beautiful and precious eggs, two, three, or four in number, and


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 usually of the rich color of old ivory very thickly splashed with a warm purplish brown.

This summer there were four nestlings in the great, untidy nest; and they kept both their devoted parents busy, catching, and tearing up into convenient morsels, fish enough to satisfy their vigorous appetites. At the moment when the father osprey returned from the lake with the trout which he had just caught they were full-fed and fast asleep, their downy heads and half-feathered, scrawny necks comfortably resting across one another's pulsing bodies. The mother bird, who had recently fed them, was away fishing in the long, green-gray seas beyond the hogback. The father, seeing them thus satisfied, tore up the trout and swallowed it, with dignified deliberation, himself. Food was plentiful, and he was not overhungry. Then, having scrupulously wiped his beak and preened his feathers, he settled himself upright on the edge of the nest and became apparently lost in contemplation of the spacious and tranquil scene outspread beneath him. A pair of bustling little crow-blackbirds, who had made their own small home among the outer sticks of the gigantic nest, flew backward and forward diligently, bringing insects in their bills for their naked, newly hatched brood. Their metallic, black plumage shone iridescently, purple


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 and green and radiant blue, in the unclouded sunlight; and from time to time the great osprey rolled his eyes upon them with a mild and casual interest. Neither he nor his mate had the slightest objection to their presence, being amicably disposed toward all living creatures except fish and possible assailants of the nest. And the blackbirds dwelt in security under that powerful, though involuntary, protection.

The osprey, the great fish hawk or fish eagle of Eastern North America, was the most attractive, in character, of all the predatory tribes of the hawks and eagles. Of dauntless courage without being quarrelsome or tyrannical, he strictly minded his own business, which was that of catching fish; and none of the wild folk of the forest, whether furred or feathered, had cause to fear him so long as they threatened no peril to his home or young. On account of this well-known good reputation, he was highly respected by the hunters and lumbermen and scattered settlers of the backwoods, and it was held a gross breach of the etiquette of the wilderness to molest him or disturb his nest. Even the fish he took—and he was a most tireless and successful fisherman—were not greatly grudged to him; for his chief depredations were upon the coarse-fleshed and always superabundant chub


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 and suckers, which no human fisherman would take the trouble to catch.

With all this good character to his credit, he was at the same time one of the handsomest of the great hawks. About two feet in length, he was of sturdy build, with immensely powerful wings whose tips reached to the end of his tail. All his upper parts were of a soft dark brown, laced delicately and sparsely with white; and the crown of his broad-skulled, intelligent head was heavily splashed with white. All his under parts were pure white except the tail, which was crossed with five or six even bars of pale umber. His long and masterful beak, curved like a sickle and nearly as sharp, was black; while his formidable talons, able to pierce to the vitals of their prey at the first clutch, were of a clean gray-blue. His eyes, large and full-orbed, with a beautiful ruby-tinted iris encircling the intense black pupil, were gemlike in their brilliance but lacked the implacable ferocity of the eyes of the eagle and the goshawk.

Presently, flying low over the crest of the hogback with a gleaming mackerel in her talons, appeared his mate. Arriving swiftly at the nest, and finding the nestlings still asleep, she deposited the mackerel in a niche among the sticks, where it lay flashing back the sun from its blue-barred


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 sides, and set herself to preening her feathers still wet from her briny plunge. The male osprey, after a glance at the prize, seemed to think it was up to him to go her one better. With a high-pitched, musical, staccato cry of Pip-pip—pip—pip—very small and childish to come from so formidable a beak—he launched himself majestically from the edge of the nest, and sailed off over the hot green tops of the spruce and fir to the lake.

Instead of soaring to his "watchtower in the blue" he flew now quite low, not more than fifty feet or so above the water; for a swarm of small flies was over the lake and the fish were rising to them freely.

In every direction he saw the little, widening rings of ripples, each of which meant a fish, large or small, feeding at the surface. His wide, alldiscerning eyes could pick and choose. Whimsically ignoring a number of tempting quarry, he winnowed slowly to the farther side of the lake; and then, pausing to hover just above the line where the water lilies ended, he dropped suddenly, struck the water with a heavy splash, half submerging himself, and rose at once, his wings beating the spray, with a big, silver chub in his claws. He had his prey gripped near the tail, so that it hung, twisting and writhing with in-


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 convenient violence, head downward. At about twenty-five or thirty feet above the water he let it go, and swooping after it caught it again dexterously in mid-air, close to the head, as he wanted it. In this position the inexorable clutch of his needle-tipped talons pierced the life out of it, and its troublesome squirming ceased.

Flying slowly with his solid burden, he had just about reached the center of the lake, when an ominous hissing in the air above him warned him that his mighty foe, from far up in the blue dome, had marked his capture and was swooping down upon him to rob him of the prize. He swerved sharply; and in the next second the eagle, a wide-winged, silvery-headed bird of twice his size, shot downward past him with a strident scream and a rustle of stiff-set plumes, swept under him in a splendid curve, and came back at him with wide-open beak and huge talons outspread. He was too heavily laden either to fight or dodge, so he discreetly dropped the fish. With a lightning swoop his tormentor caught it before it could reach the water, and flew off with it to his eyrie in a high, inaccessible ravine at the farthest end of the hogback, several miles down the outlet stream. The osprey, taking quite philosophically a discomfiture which he had suffered so many times before, stared after the magnificent pirate


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 angrily for a few seconds, then circled away to seek another quarry. He knew that he would be left in peace to enjoy what he might take.

But this time, in his exasperated anxiety to more than make good his loss, his ambition somewhat overreached itself. To borrow the pithy phrase of the backwoodsman, he "bit off more than he could chew."

One of these big, gray lake trout, or "togue," which as a rule lurk obstinately in the utmost depths, rose slowly to investigate the floating body of a dead swallow. Pausing a few inches below the surface, he considered as to whether he should gulp down the morsel or not. Deciding, through some fishy caprice, to leave it alone (possibly he had once been hooked, and broken himself free with a painful gullet!), he was just turning away to sink lazily back into the depths, when something like a thunderbolt crashed down upon the water just above him and fiery pincers of horn fixed themselves deep into his massive back.

With a convulsive surge of his broad-fluked, muscular tail he tried to dive, and for a second drew his assailant clean under. But in the next moment the osprey, with a mighty beating of wings which threshed the water into foam, forced him to the surface, and lifted him clear. But he


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 was too heavy for his captor, and almost immediately he found himself partly back in his own element, sufficiently submerged to make mighty play with his lashing tail. For all his frantic struggles, however, he could not again get clear under, so as to make full use of his strength; and neither could his adversary, for all his tremendous flapping, succeed in holding him in the air for more than a second or two at a time.

And so the furious struggle, half upon and half above the surface, went on between these two so evenly matched opponents, while the tormented water boiled and foamed, and showers of bright spray leaped into the air. But the osprey was fighting with brains as well as with wings and talons. He was slowly but surely urging his adversary over toward that white beach below the hogback, where, in the shallows, he would have him at his mercy, and be able to end the duel with a stroke or two of his rending beak. If his strength could hold out till he gained the beach he would be sure of victory. But the strain, as unusual as it was tremendous, was already beginning to tell upon him, and he was yet some way from shore.

His mate, in the meantime, had been watching everything from her high perch on the edge of the nest. At sight of the robber eagle's attack


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 and his theft of the chub her crest feathers had lifted angrily, but she had made no vain move to interfere. She knew that such an episode was all in the day's fishing, and might be counted a cheap way of purchasing immunity for the time. When her gallant partner first lifted the big lake trout into the air her bright eyes flamed with fierce approval. But when she saw that he was in difficulties her whole expression changed. Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward intently with half-raised wings. A moment more and she was darting with swift, short wing beats to his help.

By the time she arrived the desperate combatants were nearing the shore, though the big fish was still resisting with undiminished vigor, while his captor, though undaunted, was beginning to show signs of distress. With excited cries of Pip-pip, pip-pip, she hovered close above her mate, seeking to strike her eager talons into his opponent's head. But his threshing wings impeded her and it was some moments before she could accomplish it without hampering his struggles. At last she saw her opportunity, and with a lightning pounce fixed her talons upon the fish's head. They bit deep, and through and through. On the instant his struggles grew feeble, then died away. The exhausted male let go his hold and


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 rose a few yards into the air on heavy wings; while his victorious mate flapped onward to the beach half carrying her prey, half dragging it through the water. With a mighty effort she threw it clear up on the silver sand. Then she dropped it and alighted beside it, with one foot firmly clutching it in sign of victory. Her mate promptly landed beside her; whereupon she withdrew her grip in acknowledgment that the kill was truly his.

After a few minutes' rest, during which the male bird shook and preened his ruffled plumage into order, the pair fell to at their feast, tearing oft great fragments of their prey and devouring them hastily lest the eagle should return, or the eagle's yet more savage mate, and snatch the booty from them. Their object was to reduce it to a size that could be carried home conveniently to the nest. In this they were making swifl progress, when the banquet was interrupted. A long-limbed woodsman in grey homespun, with a grizzled beard and twinkling, grey-blue eyes, and a rifle over his shoulder, came suddenly into close view around a bend of the shore.

The two ospreys left their feast and flapped up into the top of a near-by pine tree. They knew the man, and knew him unoffending as far as they were concerned. He had been a near neighbor


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 ever since their arrival from the south that spring, for his rough shack, roofed with sheets of whitish yellow birch bark, stood in full view of their nest and hardly two hundred paces from it. Furthermore, they were well accustomed to the sight of him in his canoe on the lake, where he was scarcely less assiduous a fisherman than themselves. But they were shy of him, nevertheless, and would not let him watch them at their feeding. They preferred to watch him instead, unafraid and quite unresentful but mildly curious, as he strolled up to the mangled body of the fish and turned it over with the toe of his moccasined foot.

"Jee-hoshaphat!" he muttered admiringly, "Who'd ever a' thought them there fish hawks could a' handled a 'togue' ez big ez that! Some birds!"

He waved a lean and hairy brown hand approvingly at the two ospreys in the pine top, and then moved on with his loose-jointed stride up through the trees toward his shack. The birds sat watching him impassively, unwilling to resume their feast till he should be out of sight. And the big fish lay glittering in the sun, a staringly conspicuous object on the empty beach.

But other eyes meanwhile—shrewd, savage, greedy eyes—had marked and coveted the allur-


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 ing prize. The moment the woodsman disappeared around the nearest clump of firs an immense black bear burst out through the underbrush and came slouching down the beach toward the dead fish. He did not hurry, for who among the wild kindred would be so bold as to interfere with him, the monarch of the wild?

He was within five or six feet of the prey. Then, there was a sudden rush of wind above his head—harsh, rigid wings brushed confusingly across his face—and the torn body of the fish, snatched from under his very nose, was swept into the air. With a squeal of disappointed fury he made a lunge for it; but it was too late. The female osprey, fresher than her mate, had again intervened in time to save the prize, and lifted it beyond his reach.

Now under ordinary circumstances the bear had no grudge against the ospreys. But this was an insult not to be borne. The fish had been left upon the beach, and he regarded it as his. To be robbed of his prey was the most intolerable of affronts; and there is no beast more tenacious than the bear in avenging any wrong to his personal dignity.

The osprey, weighed down by her heavy burden, flew low and slowly toward the nest. Her mate flew just above her, encouraging her with


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 soft cries of Pip-pip-pip, pip-pip-pip, pip-pip-pip; while the bear galloped lumberingly beneath, his heart swelling with vindictive wrath. Hasten as he would, however, he soon lost sight of them; but he knew very well where the nest was, having seen it many times in his prowlings, so he kept on, chewing his plans for vengeance. He would teach the presumptuous birds that his overlordship of the forest was not lightly to be flouted.

After four or five minutes of clambering over a tangle of rocks and windfalls he arrived at the foot of the naked pine trunk which bore the huge nest in its crotch, nearly fifty feet above the ground. He paused for a moment to glare up at it with wicked eyes. The two ospreys, apparently heedless of his presence and its dreadful menace, were busily tearing fragments of the fish into fine shreds and feeding their hungry nestlings. His fish the bear told himself, raging at their insolent self-confidence. He would claw the nest to pieces from beneath, and devour both the nestlings themselves and the prey which had been snatched from him. He reared himself against the trunk and began to climb, laboriously, because the trunk was too huge for a good grip, and with a loud rattling of claws upon the dry, resonant wood.


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 At that first ominous sound the ospreys took alarm. Peering both together over the edge of the nest they realized at once the apalling peril, a peril beyond anything they had ever dreamed of. With sharp cries of rage and despair they swooped downward and dashed madly upon their monstrous foe. First one and then the other, and sometimes both together, they struck him, buffeting him about the face with their wings, stabbing at him in a frenzy with beak and talons. He could not strike back at them; but, on the other hand, they could make little impression upon his tough hide under its dense mat of fur. The utmost they could do was to hamper and delay his progress a little. He shut his eyes and climbed on doggedly, intent upon his vengeance.

The woodsman, approaching his shack, was struck by that chorus of shrill cries, with a note in them which he had never heard before. From where he stood he could see the nest, but not the trunk below it. "Somethin' wrong there!" he muttered, and hurried forward to get a better view. Pushing through a curtain of fir trees he saw the huge, black form of the bear, now halfway up the trunk, and the devoted ospreys fighting madly but in vain to drive him back. His eyes twinkled with appreciation, and for half a minute or so he stood watching, while that shaggy


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66 complished it returned, like men agitated by the furies, to die themselves on the walls. * * * Nevertheless, none of the defenders quitted the rampart, or would accept quarter; but each fell advancing against, or struggling with, an antagonist; and even when fallen, and in the last agony, would resign his poignard only to death. The slaughter of the conflict being completed, another, much more dreadful, presented itself in the area below : the transport of victory lost all its joy : all gazed on one another with silent astonishment and remorse, and the fiercest could not refuse a tear to the deplorable destruction spread before them." Such was the gallantry shown by my ancestor and his followers. Not only men but also women have shown bravery or courage. But such occasions happen very rarely; women are not born for such action. Satyabhama, Damayanti,


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 shape of doom crept slowly upward. "Some birds, sure, them fish hawks," he muttered finally; and raised his rifle.

As the flat crash of the heavy Winchester .38 startled the forest the bear gave a grunting squawl, hung clawing for a moment, slithered downward a few feet, then fell clear out from the trunk and dropped with a thud upon the rock below. The franctic birds darted down after him, heedless of the sound of the rifle, and struck at him again and again. But in a moment or two they perceived that he was no longer anything more than a harmless mass of dead flesh and fur. Alighting beside him they examined him curiously, as if wondering how they had done it. Then, filled with exultation over their victory, they both flew back to the nest and went on feeding their young.


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N a sunny fence corner at the foot of the pasture, partly overhung by a pink-blossomed bush of wild rose and palisaded by a thin fringe of slender, pallid grass stems, lay the ants' nest. In outward appearance it was a shallow, flattened, tawny-colored mound, this citadel in the grass, about a foot and a half across and eight or ten inches high, its whole surface covered with particles of dry earth mixed with and lightened by bitten fragments of dead grass and spruce needles, and pitted irregularly with round black holes from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in diameter. These were the easily guarded gateways to the tunnels leading to the dark and mysterious interior of the citadel. For some feet all around the base of the mound the grass roots were threaded by faint trails, made by the ants in bringing home supplies and booty to the nest.

On this bland blue morning of early summer, when the unclouded sunshine was not too hot to be gracious and stimulating, the tawny dome of the citadel was alive with workers. They were