ecause of Cyril's call. He had learned, by ugly
experience, to disregard the child's orders. They were wont to mean
much unpleasantness for him. Nevertheless, Lad halted. Not in obedience
to the summons; but because of a sound and a scent that smote him as he
started to gallop away. An eddy of the wind had borne both to the dog's
acute senses.

Stiffening, his curved eyeteeth baring themselves, his hackles
bristling, Lad galloped back to the ravine-lip; and stood there
sniffing the icy air and growling deep in his throat. Looking down to
the ledge he saw Cyril was no longer its sole occupant. Crouched at the
opening of a crevice, not ten feet from the unseeing child, was
something bulky and sinister;--a mere menacing blur against the darker
rock.

Crawling home to its lair, supper-less and frantic with hunger, after a
day of fruitless hunting through the dead forest world, a giant wildcat
had been stirred from its first fitful slumber in the ledge's crevice
by the impact of the child upon the heap of leaves. The human scent had
startled the creature and it had slunk farther back into the crevice.
The more so when the bark and inimical odor of a big dog were added to
the shattering of the ravine's solitude.

Then the dog had gone away. Curiosity,--the besetting trait of the cat
tribe,--had mastered the crevice's dweller. The wildcat had wriggled
noiselessly forward a little way, to learn what manner of enemy had
invaded its lair. And, peering out, it had beheld a spindling child; a
human atom, without strength or weapon.

Fear changed to fury in the bob-cat's feline heart. Here was no
opponent; but a mere item of prey. And, with fury, stirred
long-unsatisfied hunger; the famine hunger of mid-winter which makes
the folk of the wilderness risk capture or death by raiding guarded
hencoops.

Out from the crevice stole the wildcat. Its ears were flattened close
to its evil head. Its yellow eyes were mere slits of fire. Its claws
unsheathed themselves from the furry pads,--long, hooked claws, capable
of disemboweling a grown deer at one sabre-stroke of the muscular
hindlegs. Into the rubble and litter of the ledge the claws sank, and
receded, in rhythmic motion.

The compact yellow body tightened into a ball. The back quivered. The
feet braced themselves. The cat was gauging its distance and making
ready for a murder-spring. Cyril, his head turned the other way, was
still peering up along the cliff-edge for sight of L