ttle waves, icy
cold, broke over her head as she swam, and the water was full of snow
that blocked her way like soft ice, or floating mud. The dark line of
the other shore seemed far, far away, with perhaps the fox waiting for
her there.

But she laid her ears flat to be out of the gale, and bravely put forth
all her strength with wind and tide against her. After a long, weary
swim in the cold water, she had nearly reached the farther reeds when a
great mass of floating snow barred her road; then the wind on the bank
made strange, fox-like sounds that robbed her of all force, and she was
drifted far backward before she could get free from the floating bar.

Again the struck Out, but slowly--oh so slowly now. And when at last she
reached the lee of the tall reeds, her limbs were numbed, her strength
spent, her brave little heart was sinking, and she cared no more whether
the fox were there or not. Through the reeds she did indeed pass, but
once in the weeds her course wavered and slowed, her feeble strokes
no longer sent her landward, the ice forming around her stopped her
altogether. In a little while the cold, weak limbs ceased to move, the
furry nose-tip of the little mother Cottontail wobbled no more, and the
soft brown eyes were closed in death.

But there was no fox waiting to tear her with ravenous jaws. Rag had
escaped the first onset of the foe, and as soon as he regained his wits
he came running back to change-off and so help his mother. He met the
old fox going round the pond to meet Molly and led him far and away,
then dismissed him with a barbed-wire gash on his head, and came to the
bank and sought about and trailed and thumped, but all his searching was
in vain; he could not find his little mother. He never saw her again,
and he never knew whither she went, for she slept her never-waking sleep
in the ice-arms of her friend the Water that tells no tales.

Poor little Molly Cottontail! She was a true heroine, yet only one of
unnumbered millions that without a thought of heroism have lived and
done their best in their little world, and died. She fought a good fight
in the battle of life. She was good stuff; the stuff that never dies.
For flesh of her flesh and brain of her brain was Rag. She lives in him,
and through him transmits a finer fibre to her race.

And Rag still lives in the Swamp. Old Olifant died that winter, and the
unthrifty sons ceased to clear the Swamp or mend the wire fences. Within
a s