She touched me with a tiny staff or wand. My mind at once was
wide awake and all its faculties more alert than usual. But,
curiously, the Brownies had disappeared! I wondered at this, but
presently a series of incidents caught my attention which for the
time quite banished all thought of my new acquaintances.

A long line of Sanguine Ants,[D] the Red Slavemakers, filed by me
in irregular columns and crossed the walk to their nest which, as
you know, is placed close by the fence nearly opposite the barn.
The warriors carried in their jaws the plunder of a nest of
Fuscous Ants which I have already said lies to the right under
the verge of the Elm's shadow. Some warriors had yellowish
cocoons, some white larvae, a few carried the bodies (living or
dead I could not determine) of their victims, and several bore
upon their legs the severed heads of the poor blacks who had been
slain in defence of their home, and whose decapitated heads still
clung to their foes fixed in the rigor of death. I rose and
followed up the column of Sanguines to the nest which they were
plundering. Some of the kidnappers were plunging into the opened
gates, others issuing therefrom laden with their stolen booty,
others were engaged in fierce battle with groups of the invaded
Fuscas. Only a few of the latter were inclined to fight. They
seemed, for the most part, dazed by their misfortune. Numbers
hung to the topmost leaves and stalks of the surrounding grass
and weeds, holding in their jaws baby larvae and cocoon cradles
rescued from the invaders, with which they had hurriedly fled to
the nearest elevated objects. It was truly a pitiful sight, and I
began to wax indignant at the Sanguine wretches who could work
such domestic misery and ruin.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--A Red Slavemaker Ant with its Plunder.]

"Ah!" said a faint voice close by my ear, "yet this is Nature!"

I could see no one, but recognized the tone of Queen Fancy.
"True, most true!" I thought, and looked further. A little way
from the Fuscas' nest, just outside the circle of confusion, I
saw a solitary ant of an amber hue, the Schaufuss ant,[E] which
you have told us is also sometimes enslaved. She was moving back
and forth with cautious mien, and I easily perceived was putting
finishing touches to the closure of a little hole that marked the
gate of her formicary hut.