the poor ruses of the fugitive. Cutting
across the circlings of the trail, he picked it up again with
implacable precision, making almost a straight line through the
underbrush. When he emerged again into the open, the rabbit was in
full view ahead.

The next strip of woodland in the fugitive's path was narrow and
dense. Below it, in a patch of hillocky pasture ground, sloping to a
pond of steel-bright ice, a red fox was diligently hunting. He ran
hither and thither, furtive, but seemingly erratic, poking his nose
into half-covered moss-tufts and under the roots of dead stumps,
looking for mice or shrews. He found a couple of the latter, but
these were small satisfaction to his vigorous winter appetite.
Presently he paused, lifted his narrow, cunning nose toward the woods,
and appeared to ponder the advisability of going on a rabbit hunt. His
fine, tawny, ample brush of a tail gently swept the light snow behind
him as he stood undecided.

All at once he crouched flat upon the snow, quivering with excitement,
like a puppy about to jump at a wind-blown leaf. He had seen the
rabbit emerging from the woods. Absolutely motionless he lay, so still
that, in spite of his warm coloring, he might have been taken for a
fragment of dead wood. And as he watched, tense with anticipation, he
saw the rabbit run into a long, hollow log, which lay half-veiled in a
cluster of dead weeds. Instantly he darted forward, ran at top speed,
and crouched before the lower end of the log, where he knew the rabbit
must come out.

Within a dozen seconds the mink arrived, and followed the fugitive
straight into his ineffectual retreat. Such narrow quarters were just
what the mink loved. The next instant the rabbit shot forth--to be
caught in mid-air by the waiting fox, and die before it had time to
realize in what shape doom had come upon it.

All unconscious that he was trespassing upon another's hunt, the fox,
with a skilful jerk of his head, flung the limp and sprawling victim
across his shoulder, holding it by one leg, and started away down the
slope toward his lair on the other side of the pond.

As the mink's long body darted out from the hollow log he stopped
short, crouched flat upon the snow with twitching tail, and stared at
the triumphant intruder with eyes that suddenly blazed red. The
trespass was no less an insult than an injury; and many of the wild
kindreds show themselves possessed of a nice sensitiveness on the
point of their