back rigid and
straight as if it were dead with all four tiny paws clutched out stiff?
The trapper scans the surface of the swamp to see if some foolish
musk-rat is swimming dangerously near the sleeping mink.

Presently the hawk circles lower--lower!--Drop, straight as a stone! Its
talons are almost in the mink's body, when of a sudden the sleeper
awakens--awakens--with a leap of the four stiff little feet and a
darting spear-thrust of snapping teeth deep in the neck of the hawk! At
first the hawk rises tearing furiously at the clinging mink with its
claws. The wings sag. Down bird and beast fall. Over they roll on the
sandy beach, hawk and mink, over and over with a thrashing of the hawk's
wings to beat the treacherous little vampire off. Now the blood-sucker
is on top clutching--clutching! Now the bird flounders up craning his
neck from the death-grip. Then the hawk falls on his back. His wings are
prone. They cease to flutter.

Running to the bank the trapper is surprised to see the little
blood-sucker making off with the prey instead of deserting it as all
creatures akin to the weasel family usually do. That means a family of
mink somewhere near, to be given their first lesson in bird-hunting, in
mink-hawking by the body of this poor, dead, foolish gyrfalcon.

By a red mark here, by a feather there, crushed grass as of something
dragged, a little webbed footprint on the wet clay, a tiny marking of
double dots where the feet have crossed a dry stone, the trapper slowly
takes up the trail of the mink. Mink are not prime till the late fall.
Then the reddish fur assumes the shades of the russet grasses where they
run until the white of winter covers the land. Then--as if nature were
to exact avengement for all the red slaughter the mink has wrought
during the rest of the year--his coat becomes dark brown, almost black,
the very shade that renders him most conspicuous above snow to all the
enemies of the mink world. But while the trapper has no intention of
destroying what would be worthless now but will be valuable in the
winter, it is not every day that even a trapper has a chance to trail a
mink back to its nest and see the young family.

But suddenly the trail stops. Here is a sandy patch with some tumbled
stones under a tangle of grasses and a rivulet not a foot away.
Ah--there it is--a nest or lair, a tiny hole almost hidden by the
rushes! But the nest seems empty. Fast as the trapper has come, the mink
came f