ague
idea of where he was going or what he wanted to do. Presently he took it
into his head that he wanted to cross the pasture, so he forsook the
fence and started off over the grass; and as luck would have it, his
keen, investigating nose sniffed the sod just at the point whereunder
the sleeping shrew lay hidden. The turf that formed the little fighter's
ceiling was not more than half an inch in thickness.

The smell that came up through the grass-roots was strong, and not
particularly savoury. But the red fox was not overparticular just then.
He would have chosen rabbit or partridge had Mother Nature consulted
his wishes more minutely. But as it was he saw no reason to turn up his
sharp nose at shrew. After a few hasty but discreet sniffings, which
enabled him to locate the careless slumberer, he pounced upon the exact
spot and fell to clawing the sod ferociously. His long nails and
powerful fore paws tore off the thin covering of turf in less time than
it takes to tell of it, and the next instant the shrew was hurled out
into the sunlight, dazzled and half stunned. Almost before he touched
the grass a pair of narrow jaws snapped him up. Without a moment's delay
the fox turned and trotted off up the pasture with his prey, toward his
den on the other side of the hill; and as the discriminating sunlight
peered down into the uncovered tunnel, in a few minutes flies came to
investigate, and many industrious beetles. The body of the dead snake
was soon a centre of teeming, hungry, busy life, toiling to remove all
traces of what had happened. For Nature, though she works out almost all
her ends by tragedy, is ceaselessly attentive to conceal the red marks
of her violence.

The Ringwaak Buck

Down through the leafy tangle the sunlight fell in little irregular
splotches, flecking the ruddy-brown floor of a thicket on the southward
slope of Ringwaak. In the very heart of the thicket, curled close and
with its soft, fine muzzle resting flat on its upgathered hind legs, lay
a young fawn.

The ground, covered with a deep, elastic carpet of dead spruce and
hemlock needles, was much the same colour as the little animal's coat.
The latter, however, was diversified with spots of a lighter hue, which
matched marvellously with the scattered splotches of sunlight--so
marvellously, indeed, that only an eye that was initiated, as well as
discriminating, could tell the patches of shine from the patches of
colour or distinguis