r Redruff, for he saw
that now the man with the gun was getting in range. He gained the
great trunk, and behind it, as he paused a moment to call earnestly to
Graytail, 'This way, this way,' he heard a slight noise under the bank
before him that betrayed the ambush, then there was a terrified cry from
Graytail as the dog sprang at her, she rose in air and skimmed behind
the shielding trunk, away from the gunner in the open, right into the
power of the miserable wretch under the bank.

Whirr, and up she went, a beautiful, sentient, noble being.

Bang, and down she fell--battered and bleeding, to gasp her life out and
to lie, mere carrion in the snow.

It was a perilous place for Redruff. There was no chance for a safe
rise, so he squatted low. The dog came within ten feet of him, and the
stranger, coming across to Cuddy, passed at five feet, but he never
moved till a chance came to slip behind the great trunk away from both.
Then he safely rose and flew to the lonely glen by Taylor's Hill.

One by one the deadly cruel gun had stricken his near ones down, till
now, once more, he was alone. The Snow Moon slowly passed with many a
narrow escape, and Redruff, now known to be the only survivor of his
kind, was relentlessly pursued, and grew wilder every day.

It seemed, at length, a waste of time to follow him with a gun, so when
the snow was deepest, and food scarcest, Cuddy hatched a new plot. Right
across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one now in the Stormy
Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail rabbit, an old friend, cut
several of these with his sharp teeth, but some remained, and Redruff,
watching a far-off speck that might turn out a hawk, trod right in one
of them, and in an instant was jerked into the air to dangle by one
foot.

Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to
inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow-creature, simply because
that creature does not speak his language? All that day, with growing,
racking pains, poor Redruff hung and beat his great, strong wings in
helpless struggles to be free. All day, all night, with growing torture,
until he only longed for death. But no one came. The morning broke, the
day wore on, and still he hung there, slowly dying; his very strength a
curse. The second night crawled slowly down, and when, in the dawdling
hours of darkness, a great Horned Owl, drawn by the feeble flutter of a
dying wing, cut short the pain, the dee