ded line, he left that polecat considerably
redder than when he found her, and weak, as if she had been bitten by
leeches. The polecat had certainly saved her young, or thought she had,
although I cannot swear that the female genet had really meant them harm;
but she did not look as if she had saved much else. However, she held
the field of battle, and the foe had fled, and that is supposed to be the
sign of victory; but that had been done by her "gassing" methods, so to
speak, not by fighting alone.

Rippling about among the branches, an incarnation of grace personified,
and hunting for her by nose alone, for in the moonlight her exquisite
creamy, dappled coat was invisible--a real piece of magic, this--the male
genet quickly found her for whom he sought. She remained low, lying
along a bough, line for line, shadow-patch for shadow-patch, flat as the
very bark, and as undulating, until she felt sure that he would run over
her; then she rose, spitting and snarling in his face, cat-like and
vicious.

It was a poor kind of thanks for having saved her life, perhaps, but it
was her way--_then_. And, anyway, who can blame her? She had never met
any living creature that was not a foe or an armed "unbenevolent" neutral
in all her life, and she did not know that any other category or creature
existed, the recent fight notwithstanding.

But the male genet neither ran nor fought. He dodged her snap, by a
tenth of an inch, almost without seeming to move, and there he stood
looking at her meekly. She leapt to him, and he shot off, as she arrived
upon, the place where he had been. Perhaps she knew that only a genet,
or a mongoose, could do that trick in a manner at once so machine-like
and precise; and after that she merely sat, bent in a curve, with her
lips up. But her spring had given her away, and he saw that she was
lame. Perhaps he saw, too, the gleam of hunger, the wild, cruel gleam
that forgets all else, in her eyes; but who am I to say whether he
understood it?

Be that as it may, the male vanished suddenly and without explanation,
doubling on his trail and going out like a snuffed candle. He was in
view, as a matter of fact, several times during the next few minutes,
climbing quietly; but the dark blotches of the leaf-shadows magicked him
into invisibility, and no one could tell where he was, till suddenly the
silence was smitten by one piercing squawk somewhere among the greenery
above. Then a crash, wild