to the
mountain-side with a stern clutch of roots, the prostrate trunks and
branches, the vines embracing everything with strong knots and coils of
growth, had a curious effect, as of things which had whirled for ages in
a current of raging water, only it was not water, but wind, which had
disposed everything in circling lines of yielding to its fiercest points
of onset. And now over all this whirl of wood and rock and dead trunks
and branches and vines descended the snow. It blew down like smoke over
the rock-crest above; it stood in a gyrating column like some
death-wraith of nature, on the level, then it broke over the edge of
the precipice, and the Cat cowered before the fierce backward set of
it. It was as if ice needles pricked his skin through his beautiful
thick fur, but he never faltered and never once cried. He had nothing to
gain from crying, and everything to lose; the rabbit would hear him cry
and know he was waiting.

It grew darker and darker, with a strange white smother, instead of the
natural blackness of night. It was a night of storm and death superadded
to the night of nature. The mountains were all hidden, wrapped about,
overawed, and tumultuously overborne by it, but in the midst of it
waited, quite unconquered, this little, unswerving, living patience and
power under a little coat of grey fur.

A fiercer blast swept over the rock, spun on one mighty foot of
whirlwind athwart the level, then was over the precipice.

Then the Cat saw two eyes luminous with terror, frantic with the impulse
of flight, he saw a little, quivering, dilating nose, he saw two
pointing ears, and he kept still, with every one of his fine nerves and
muscles strained like wires. Then the rabbit was out--there was one long
line of incarnate flight and terror--and the Cat had her.

Then the Cat went home, trailing his prey through the snow.

The Cat lived in the house which his master had built, as rudely as a
child's block-house, but stanchly enough. The snow was heavy on the low
slant of its roof, but it would not settle under it. The two windows and
the door were made fast, but the Cat knew a way in. Up a pine-tree
behind the house he scuttled, though it was hard work with his heavy
rabbit, and was in his little window under the eaves, then down through
the trap to the room below, and on his master's bed with a spring and a
great cry of triumph, rabbit and all. But his master was not there; he
had been gone since early