t became overpowering, and they
found the body of the skunk, where fate had overtaken him, lying
beside the path. They stopped, considered, and turned back to their
wildwood foraging; and through all that spring they went no more to
the farmyard, lest they should call down a similar doom upon
themselves.

As spring ripened and turned to summer over the land, food grew
abundant in the neighbourhood of the sycamore, and there was no
temptation to trespass on man's preserves. There were grouse nests to
rifle, there were squirrels, hare, wood-mice, chipmunks, to exercise
all the craft and skill of the raccoons. Also there were the
occasional unwary trout, chub, or suckers, to be scooped up upon the
borders of the brook. And once, more in hate than in hunger, the old
mother raccoon had the fierce joy of eradicating a nest of weasels,
which she found in a pile of rocks. She had a savage antipathy to the
weasel tribe, whose blood-lust menaces all the lesser wood-folk, and
whose teeth delight to kill, after hunger is sated, for the mere
relish of a taste of quivering brain or a spurt of warm blood. The
raccoon carried more scars from the victory over the weasels than she
had to remind her of the scuffle with the dogs. But she had the nerve
that takes punishment without complaint, and the scars troubled her
little.

When the five young raccoons came down from the sycamore and began to
depend upon their own foraging, it soon became necessary to extend the
range, as game grew shyer and more scarce. Even chub and suckers
learn something in course of time; and as for wood-mice and chipmunks,
under such incentive as an active family of raccoons can give them
they attain to a truly heartless cunning in the art of making their
enemies go hungry. Hanging together with an intense clannishness, the
raccoon family would make expeditions of such length as to keep often
for two or three days at a time away from the home in the sycamore.

At last, one night in late summer, when the stars seemed to hang low
among the warm and thick-leaved trees, and warm scents steamed up
wherever the dew was disturbed by furry feet, the raccoons wandered
over to the edge of the corn-field. It chanced that the corn was just
plumping to tender and juicy fulness. The old raccoons showed the
youngsters what richness of sweetness lay hidden within the green
wrappings of the ears; and forth-with the whole clan fell to feasting
recklessly.

In regard to the du