child crying in the woods. He stopped, lowered his burden to the road,
and stood straining ears and eyes in the direction of the sound. It was
just at this time that the two panthers also stopped, and lifted their
heads to listen. Their ears were keener than those of the man, and the
sound had reached them at a greater distance.

Presently the settler realized whence the cries were coming. He called
to mind the cabin; but he did not know the cabin's owner had departed.
He cherished a hearty contempt for the drunken squatter; and on the
drunken squatter's child he looked with small favour, especially as a
playmate for his own boy. Nevertheless he hesitated before resuming his
journey.

"Poor little fellow!" he muttered, half in wrath. "I reckon his precious
father's drunk down at 'the Corners,' and him crying for loneliness!"
Then he re-shouldered his burden and strode on doggedly.

But louder, shriller, more hopeless and more appealing, arose the
childish voice, and the settler paused again, irresolute, and with
deepening indignation. In his fancy he saw the steaming supper his wife
would have awaiting him. He loathed the thought of retracing his steps,
and then stumbling a quarter of a mile through the stumps and bog of the
wood road. He was foot-sore as well as hungry, and he cursed the
vagabond squatter with serious emphasis; but in that wailing was a
terror which would not let him go on. He thought of his own little one
left in such a position, and straightway his heart melted. He turned,
dropped his bundle behind some bushes, grasped his gun, and made speed
back for the cabin.

"Who knows," he said to himself, "but that drunken idiot has left his
youngster without a bite to eat in the whole miserable shanty? Or maybe
he's locked out, and the poor little beggar's half scared to death.
_Sounds_ as if he was scared;" and at this thought the settler quickened
his pace.

As the hungry panthers drew near the cabin, and the cries of the lonely
child grew clearer, they hastened their steps, and their eyes opened to
a wider circle, flaming with a greener fire. It would be thoughtless
superstition to say the beasts were cruel. They were simply keen with
hunger, and alive with the eager passion of the chase. They were not
ferocious with any anticipation of battle, for they knew the voice was
the voice of a child, and something in the voice told them the child was
solitary. Theirs was no hideous or unnatural rage, as it