an outcry that brought a score of
frightened, clamoring birds to the scene. But Kagax never heeded. His
whole being seemed to be concentrated in the point of his nose. He
followed like a bloodhound to the top of the second spruce, sniffed
here and there till he caught the scent of Meeko's passage through the
air, ran to the end of a branch in the same direction and leaped to
the ground, landing not ten feet from the spot where the squirrel had
struck a moment before. There he picked up the trail, followed over
logs and rocks to the maple, up to the third branch, and across fifty
yards of intervening branches to the giant spruce where his victim sat
half paralyzed, watching from his crevice.

Here Kagax was more deliberate. Left and right, up and down he went
with deadly patience, from the lowest branch to the top, a hundred
feet above, following every cross and winding of the trail. A dozen
times he stopped, went back, picked up the fresher trail, and went on
again. A dozen times he passed within a few feet of his victim,
smelling him strongly, but scorning to use his eyes till his nose had
done its perfect work. So he came to the last turn, followed the last
branch, his nose to the bark, straight to the crevice under the broken
branch, where Meeko crouched shivering, knowing it was all over.

There was a cry, that no one heeded in the woods; there was a flash
of sharp teeth, and the squirrel fell, striking the ground with a
heavy thump. Kagax ran down the trunk, sniffed an instant at the body
without touching it, and darted away to the form among the ferns. He
had passed it at daylight when he was too heavy for killing.

Halfway to the lake, he stopped; a thrilling song from a dead spruce
top bubbled out over the darkening woods. When a hermit thrush sings
like that, his nest is somewhere just below. Kagax began twisting in
and out like a snake among the bushes, till a stir in a tangle of
raspberry vines, which no ears but his or an owl's would ever notice,
made him shrink close to the ground and look up. The red fire blazed
in his eyes again; for there was Mother Thrush just settling onto her
nest, not five feet from his head.

To climb the raspberry vines without shaking them, and so alarming the
bird, was out of the question; but there was a fire-blasted tree just
behind. Kagax climbed it stealthily on the side away from the bird,
crept to a branch over the nest, and leaped down. Mother Thrush was
preening hers