f a clean-stemmed
young maple. Here the trespasser had paused to stretch himself,
setting his claws deep into the bark. These claw-marks the lynx
appeared to take as a challenge or a defiance. Rearing himself against
the tree, he stretched himself to his utmost. But his highest scratch
was two inches below the mark of the stranger. This still further
enraged him. Possibly, it might also have daunted him a little but for
the fact that his own claw-marks were both deeper and wider apart
than those of his rival.

From the clawed tree, the trail now led to the very edge of the open
and thence to the top of an overhanging rock, white and sharply
chiseled in the moonlight. The lynx was just about to climb the rock,
when there beneath it, in the revealing radiance, he saw a sight which
flattened him in his tracks. The torn carcass of a young doe lay a few
feet from the base of the rock; and on top of the prey, glaring savage
challenge, crouched such a wildcat as the lynx had never even dreamed
of.

II.

A few days before this night of the white full moon, a gigantic
wildcat living some fifteen miles from Ringwaak had decided to change
his hunting-grounds. His range, over which he had ruled for years, was
a dark, thick-wooded slope overlooking the brown pools and loud chutes
of the Guimic stream. Here he had prospered hunting with continual
success, and enjoying life as only the few overlords among the wild
kindreds can hope to enjoy it. He had nothing to fear, as long as he
avoided quarrel with a bear or a bull moose. And a narrow escape when
young had taught him to shun trap and snare, and everything that
savoured of the hated works of man.

Now, the lumbermen had found their way to his shadowy domain. Loud
axe-strokes, the crash of falling trees, the hard clank of ox-chains,
jarred the solemn stillness. But far more intolerable to the great
cat's ears was the noise of laughter and shouting, the masterful
insolence of the human voice unabashed in the face of the solitude.
The men had built a camp near each end of his range. No retreat was
safe from their incursions. And they had cut down the great pine-tree
whose base shielded the entrance of his favourite lair. All through
the winter the angry cat had spent the greater portion of his time
slinking aside from these boisterous invaders or glaring fierce hate
upon them from his densest coverts. Thus occupied, he had too little
time for his hunting, and, moreover, the tr