e away before him, and his investigating nose
poked itself through into another gallery, a shade larger than his own.
The fact that the gallery was larger than his own might well have made
him draw back, but his was not the drawing-back disposition. His nose
told him that the rival digger was a mole, and had but recently gone by.
Without a second's hesitation he clawed through, and darted down the new
tunnel, seeking either a fight or a feast, as fate might please to
award.

In his savage haste, however, the shrew was not discriminating; and all
at once he realized that he had lost the fresh scent. This was still
the mole's gallery, but there was no longer any sign that its owner had
very lately traversed it. As a matter of fact, several yards back the
shrew had blundered past the mouth of a branching tunnel, up which the
mole, ignorant that he was being pursued, had taken leisurely way. The
pursuer stopped, hesitating for a moment, then decided to push ahead and
see what might turn up. In half a minute a breath of the upper air met
him,--then a star of light glimmered before him,--and he came out at one
of the exits which the mole had used for dumping earth.

At this point the shrew seemed to decide that he had had enough of
underground foraging. He stuck his head up through the opening, and
looked over the green turf. The opening was close to a pile of stones in
the fence corner, which promised both shelter and good hunting. Having
hastily dusted the loose earth from his face and whiskers, he emerged,
ran to the stone heap, and whisked into the nearest crevice.

On a warm gray stone near the top of the pile, gently waving its wings
in the sunshine, glowed a gorgeous red-and-black butterfly. The
intensity of its colouring seemed to vibrate in the unclouded radiance.
Suddenly, from just beneath the stone on which it rested, slipped forth
the shrew, and darted at it with a swift, scrambling leap. The beautiful
insect, however, was wide awake, and saw the danger in good time. One
beat of its wide, gorgeous wings uplifted its light body as a breath
softly uplifts a tuft of thistledown. The baffled shrew jumped straight
into the air, but in vain; and the great butterfly went flickering off
aimlessly and idly over the pasture to find some less perilous
basking-place.

Angered by this failure, the shrew descended the stone heap and scurried
over to the fence, poking his nose under every tussock of weeds in
search of the n