to conceal the fact. The unhealth of such a procedure is
swiftly borne in upon such rash ones as make the experiment, and they
seldom live long enough to pass their folly on. Only the mighty can
afford not to walk circumspectly, and they are very few, and, with man
about, even they have learnt wisdom. That is why the wild is so
guarded, and why self-effacement becomes almost a religion therein.

Even the cat knew this, I fancy. Anyway, she looked surprised as she
crouched again, and quickly.

Now, of all the wild-people, probably one of the most brazen is the
pig; it is also one of the bravest. I mean, the wild pig. And it
would seem that he, or she, who came that way was a pig, only a
precious little one. You know the ways of a pig? How you can hear him
coming long before he comes; how he must snuffle, and grunt, and poke
dead leaves, and snort, and tread on things, and snore. Very good. So
it was here; and these things did this new-comer, who approached
through the mist--only all in a dwarfed way, as if they were done by a
tiny grown-up pig. Its gruntings were almost to itself; its snortings,
snorings, and sniffings quite small; and its snorts little miniature
ones. Only, in the profound silence of the night, and in comparison
with the furtive noises of all the rest of the night-wild, they sounded
quite loud.

The cat, as she crouched, passed from supercilious surprise to
amazement. You could tell that by the roundness of her eyes. She had
no knowledge of pigs, and had never met any of the wild-folk gone mad;
yet it seemed that one must have done so now, and that one--to her
growing uneasiness--was coming straight towards her. I fancy that in
that moment she thought of the warm fire, the singing kettle, the
saucer of milk, and Miss Somebody's best arm-chair.

The thing, whatever it was, came straight on in a more or less zigzag
line, till the cat could make it out dimly in the moonlight, a
blotched, roughly egg-shaped form, less than a foot long, so low to the
ground that it appeared to be running on wheels, and covered all over
with prickles, like a Rugby ball into which tin tacks had been driven
head first, the sharp ends pointing outwards and backwards. Its head
was the small end, and much lower than its back. Its eyes, little and
pig-like, set in a black cowl, gleamed red in the tired moonlight; and
its face was the face of a pig, nothing else--just pure pig; insolent,
cunning, vulgar, and bla