hen the trapper seems to be doing nothing but
lying on his back in the sun, he has witnessed a curious, but common,
battle in pantomime between bird and beast. A prairie-hawk circles and
drops, lifts and wheels again with monotonous silent persistence above
the swamp. What quarry does he seek, this lawless forager of the upper
airs still hunting a hidden nook of the low prairie? If he were out
purely for exercise, like the little badger when it goes rubbing the
back of its head from post to post, there would be a buzzing of wings
and shrill lonely callings to an unseen mate.

But the circling hawk is as silent as the very personification of death.
Apparently he can't make up his mind for the death-drop on some rat or
frog down there in the swamp. The trapper notices that the hawk keeps
circling directly above the place where the waters of the swamp tumble
from the ravine in a small cataract to join a lower river. He knows,
too, from the rich orange of the plumage that the hawk is young. An
older fellow would not be advertising his intentions in this fashion.
Besides, an older hawk would have russet-gray feathering. Is the
rascally young hawk meditating a clutch of talons round some of the
unsuspecting trout that usually frequent the quiet pools below a
waterfall. Or does he aim at bigger game? A young hawk is bold with the
courage that has not yet learned the wisdom of caution. That is why
there are so many more of the brilliant young red hawks in our museums
than old grizzled gray veterans whose craft circumvents the specimen
hunter's cunning. Now the trapper comes to have as keen a sense of
_feel_ for all the creatures of the wilds as the creatures of the wilds
have for man; so he shifts his position that he may find what is
attracting the hawk.

Down on the pebbled beach below the waterfalls lies an auburn bundle of
fur, about the size of a very long, slim, short-legged cat, still as a
stone--some member of the weasel family gorged torpid with fish,
stretched out full length to sleep in the sun. To sleep, ah, yes, and as
the Danish prince said, "perchance to dream"; for all the little fellows
of river and prairie take good care never to sleep where they are
exposed to their countless enemies. This sleep of the weasel arouses
the man's suspicion. The trapper draws out his field-glass. The sleeper
is a mink, and its sleep is a sham with beady, red eyes blinking a deal
too lively for real death. Why does it lie on its