kirting the granite
boulders, life went on with an intensity all the deeper and more
stringent for the seal of silence laid upon it. The small, fugitive
kindreds moved noiselessly about their affairs, foraging, mating,
sometimes even playing, but ever watchful, a sleepless vigilance the
price of each hour's breath; while even more furtive, but more
intermittent in their watchfulness, the hunting and blood-loving
kindreds followed the trails.

Gliding swiftly from bush to rock, from rock to thicket, now for an
instant clear and terrible in a patch of moonlight, now ghost-gray and
still more terrible in the sharp-cut shadows, came a round-eyed,
crouching shape. It was somewhere about the size of a large spaniel,
but shorter in the body, and longer in the legs; and its hind legs, in
particular, though kept partly gathered beneath the body, in readiness
for a lightning spring, were so disproportionately long as to give a
high, humped-up, rabbity look to the powerful hind quarters. This
combined suggestion of the rabbit and the tiger was peculiarly
daunting in its effect. The strange beast's head was round and
cat-like, but with high, tufted ears, and a curious, back-brushed
muffle of whiskers under the throat. Its eyes, wide and pale, shone
with a cold ferocity and unconquerable wildness. Its legs, singularly
large for the bulk of its body, and ending in broad, razor-clawed,
furry pads of feet, would have seemed clumsy, but for the impression
of tense steel springs and limitless power which they gave in every
movement. In weight, this stealthy and terrifying figure would have
gone perhaps forty pounds--but forty pounds of destroying energy and
tireless swiftness.

As he crept through a spruce thicket, his savage eyes turning from
side to side, the lynx came upon a strange trail, and stopped short,
crouching. His stub of a tail twitched, his ears flattened back
angrily, his long, white fangs bared themselves in a soundless snarl.
A green flame seemed to flicker in his eyes, as he subjected every
bush, every stone, every stump within his view to the most piercing
scrutiny. Detecting no hostile presence, he bent his attention to the
strange trail, sniffing at it with minute consideration.

The scent of the trail was that of a wildcat; but its size was too
great for that of any wildcat this big lynx had ever known. Wildcats
he viewed with utter scorn. For three years he had ruled all Ringwaak
Hill; and no wildcat, in those