ing that region every spring. Not even the
older people knew to what species it belonged. It came round the barns
at night, and no one had ever seen it distinctly. Some believed it to be
a catamount or panther; others who had caught glimpses of it said that
it was a black creature with white stripes.

Traps had been set for it, but always without success. Mr. Wilbur, one
of the neighbors, had watched from his barn and fired a charge of
buckshot at it; but immediately the creature had disappeared in the
darkness, carrying off a lamb. It visited one place or another nearly
every night for a month or more--as long, indeed, as the supply of lambs
held out. Then it would vanish until the following spring.

On the day above referred to I saw Tom coming across the snowy fields
that lay between the Edwards' farm and the old Squire's. Guessing that
he had something to tell me, I hastened forth to meet him.

"That old striped catamount has come round again!" Tom exclaimed. "He
was at Batchelder's last night and got two dead lambs. And night before
last he was at Wilbur's. I've got four dead lambs saved up. And old
Hughy Glinds has told me a way to watch for him and shoot him."

Hughy Glinds was a rheumatic old man who lived in a small log house up
in the edge of the great woods and made baskets for a living. In his
younger days he had been a trapper and was therefore a high authority in
such matters among the boys.

"We shall have to have a sleigh or a pung to watch from," Tom explained.
"Old Hughy says to carry out a dead lamb and leave it near the bushes
below our barn, and to haul a sleigh there and leave it a little way
off, and do this for three or four nights till old Striped gets used to
seeing the sleigh. Then, after he has come four nights, we're to go
there early in the evening and hide in the sleigh, with a loaded gun.
Old Striped will be used to seeing the sleigh there, and won't be
suspicious.

"Pa don't want me to take our sleigh so long," Tom went on. "He wants to
use it before we'd be through with it. But"--and I now began to see why
Tom had been so willing to share with me the glory of killing the
marauder--"there's an old sleigh out here behind your barn. Nobody uses
it now. Couldn't we take that?"

I felt sure that the old Squire would not care, but I proposed to ask
the opinion of Addison. Tom opposed our taking Addison into our
confidence.

"He's older, and he'd get all the credit for it," he objecte