er head. And then cat, trap, and clog all went rolling over and
over down the slope, and landed in a heap at the bottom. All the breath
and the spirit were knocked out of him, and for a long time he could do
nothing but lie still in the snow, trembling with weakness and pain, and
moaning miserably. It must have been half an hour before he could pull
himself together again, and then, just as he was about to begin the
climb up the far side of the gully, he suddenly discovered that he was
no longer alone. Off to the left, among some thick bushes, he saw the
lurking form of a timber-wolf. He looked to the right, and there was
another. Behind him was a third, and he thought he saw several others
still farther away, slinking from bush to bush, and gradually drawing
nearer. Ordinarily they would hardly have dreamed of tackling him, and,
if they had mustered up sufficient courage to attempt to overpower him
by mere force of numbers, he would simply have climbed a tree and
laughed at them. But now it was different.

The lynx cowered down in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his
normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came
over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a
wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had
very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of
smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever
suffered as he did. Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed
and eaten almost before they knew what was coming; but he had to lie
still and see his enemies slowly closing in upon him, knowing all the
time that he could not fight to any advantage, and that to fly was
utterly impossible. But when the last moment arrived he must have braced
up and given a good account of himself. At least that was what the
trapper decided when he came a few hours later to look for his trap. The
lynx was gone--not even a broken bone of him was left--but there in the
trodden and blood-stained snow was the record of an awful struggle.
There must have been something heroic about him, after all.

For the rest of the winter his widow had to hunt alone. This was not
such a great hardship in itself, for they had frequently gone out
separately on their marauding expeditions--more often, perhaps, than
they had gone together. But now there was never anyone to curl up beside
her in the hollow tree and help her keep warm, or to