But presently three more flies came down together, and lit in a row, one behind another. They were different from the first, and he decided to try again. He chose the foremost of the three, and found it quite as ill-tasting as the other had been; but this time he didn't spit it out, for the stinger was a little too quick for him, and before he could let go it was fast in his lip. For the next few minutes he tore around the pool as if he was crazy, frightening some of the smaller fishes almost out of their wits, and sending them rushing up-stream in a panic. He himself had more than once been badly scared by seeing other trout do just what he was doing, but he had never realized what it all meant. Now he understood.

The first thing he did was to go shooting along the surface for several feet, throwing his head from side to side as he went, and doing his best to shake that horrible fly out of his mouth. But it wouldn't shake, so he tried jumping out of the water and striking at the line with his tail. That wasn't any better, and next he rushed off up the stream as hard as he could go. But the line kept pulling him round to the left with gentle but irresistible force, and before he knew it he was back in the pool again. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, it was always pulling, pulling, pulling—not hard enough to tear the hook away, but just enough to keep him from getting an inch of slack. If there had been any chance to jerk he would probably have got loose in short order. He rushed around the pool so hard that he soon grew weary, and presently he sank to the bottom, hoping to lie still for a few minutes, and rest, and perhaps think of some new way of escape. But even there that steady tugging never ceased. It seemed as if it would pull his jaw out of his head if he didn't yield, and before long he let himself be drawn up again to the surface. Once he was so close to the shore that the angler made a thrust at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side. It frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away again so fast that the reel sang, and the line swished through the water like a knife.



The other two flies were trailing behind, and the short line that held them was constantly catching on his fins and twisting itself around his tail in a way that annoyed him greatly. He almost thought he could get away if they were not there to hinder him. And yet, as it finally turned out, it was one of those flies that saved his life. He was coming slowly back from that last unsuccessful rush for liberty, fighting for every inch, and only yielding to a strength a thousand times greater than his own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank, until the hook came away and he was free.

It was a painful experience, and he carried the scar as long as he lived, but the lesson he learned was worth all it cost. I won't say that he never touched bait again, but he was much more cautious, and no other artificial fly ever stung him as badly as that one.

The years went by, and the Trout increased in size and strength and wisdom, as a trout should. One after another his rivals went away to the happy hunting-grounds, most of them losing their lives because they could not resist the temptation to taste a made-up fly, or to swallow a luscious angle-worm festooned on a dainty little steel hook; and the number of fish who dared dispute his right to do whatever he pleased grew beautifully less. And at last there was only one trout left in all the stream who was larger and stronger than he. That was the same big fellow who had come so near swallowing him on the occasion of his first visit to the nesting-grounds; and the way the fierce, solemn old brute finally departed this life deserves a paragraph all to itself.

It happened one morning in early spring, just after the ice had gone out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and lazy after the long, dull winter, though he had an eye open, as always, for anything particularly good to eat. I doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not believe in eating them out of season; but almost anything else was welcome. He was faring very well that morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running high, and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been swept into it by the melting snow. And presently, what should come drifting down with the current but a poor little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain effort to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had swallowed a mouse whole, just as you would take an oyster from the half-shell, and he knew that they were very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky little animal, and in another second he would have had him; but just then the big bully came swaggering up with an air which seemed to say: "That's my meat. You get out of this!"

Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized the mouse, and then—his time had come. He fought bravely, but he was fairly hooked, and in a few minutes he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath, flopping wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand and dirt. If he had understood English he might have overheard an argument which immediately took place between the angler and a girl, and which began something like this:

"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice aren't good bait? This is the biggest trout that's been caught in this stream for years."

"Oh, George, don't kill him! He's so pretty! Put him back in the water."

"Put him back in the water? Well, I should say not! What do you take me for?"

Evidently the girl took him for one who could be easily influenced by the right person, for she kept up the argument, and in the end she won her case. The trout was tossed back into the stream, where he gave himself a shake or two, to get rid of the sand, and then swam away, apparently as well as ever. But girls don't always know what is good for trout. It would really have been kinder if the angler had hit him over the head with the butt of his fishing-rod, and then carried him home and put him in the frying-pan. In his struggles a part of the mucus had been rubbed from his body, and that always means trouble for a fish. A few days later our friend met him again, and noticed that a curious growth had appeared on his back and sides—a growth which bore a faint resemblance to the bloom on a peach, and which had taken the exact shape of the prints of the angler's fingers. The fungus had got him. He was dying, slowly but surely, and within a week he turned over on his back and drifted away down the stream. A black bear found him whirling round and round in a little eddy under the bank, and that was the end of him.

And so our friend became the King of the Trout Stream.

You are not to suppose, however, that he paid very much attention to his subjects, or that he was particularly fond of having them about him and giving them orders. On the contrary, he had become very hermit-like in his habits. In his youth he had been fond of society, and he and his companions had often roamed the stream in little schools and bands, but of late years his tastes seemed to have undergone a change, and he kept to himself and lurked in the shady, sunless places till his skin grew darker and darker, and he more and more resembled the shadows in which he lived. His great delight was to watch from the depths of some cave-like hollow under an overhanging bank until a star-gazer, or a herring, or a minnow, or some other baby-eater came in sight, and then to rush out and swallow him head first. He took ample revenge on all those pesky little fishes for all that they had done and tried to do to him and his brethren in the early days. The truth is that every brook trout is an Ishmaelite. The hand of every creature is against him, from that of the dragon-fly larva to that of the man with the latest invention in the way of patent fishing-tackle. It is no wonder if he turns the tables on his enemies whenever he has a chance, or even if he sometimes goes so far, in his general ruthlessness, as to eat his own offspring.

Yet, in spite of our friend's moroseness and solitary habits, there were certain times and seasons when he did come more or less in contact with his inferiors. In late spring and early summer he liked to sport for a while in the swift rapids—perhaps to stretch his muscles after the dull, quiet life of the winter-time, or possibly to free himself from certain little insects which sometimes fastened themselves to his body, and which, for lack of hands, it was rather difficult to get rid of. Here he often met some of his subjects, and later, when the hot weather came on, they all went to the spring-holes which formed their summer resorts. And at such times he never hesitated to take advantage of his superior size and strength. He always picked out the coolest and most comfortable places in the pools, and helped himself to the choicest morsels of food; and the others took what was left, without question. And when the summer was gone, and the water grew cold and invigorating, and once more he put on his wedding-garment and hurried away to the gravelly shallows, how different was his conduct from what it had been when he was a yearling! Then he was only a hanger-on; now he selected his nest and his mate to suit himself; and nobody ever dared to interfere. Whether he ever again chose that beautiful little fish from the hatchery, whom he had been so fond of when he was a three-year-old, is a question which I would rather not try to answer. Among all the vicissitudes, dangers, and rivalries of life in a trout stream, a permanent marriage seems to be almost an impossibility; and I fear that the affections of a fish are not remarkable for depth or constancy.

The Trout had altered in many ways besides his relations to his fellows. The curving lines of his body were not quite as graceful as they had once been, and sometimes he wore a rather lean and dilapidated look, especially in the six months from November to May. His tail was not as handsomely forked as when he was young, but was nearly square across the end, and was beginning to be a little frayed at the corners. His lower jaw had grown out beyond the upper, and its extremity was turned up in a wicked-looking hook which was almost a disfigurement, but which he often found very useful in hustling a younger trout out of the way. Even his complexion had grown darker, as we have already seen. Altogether he was less prepossessing than of old, but of a much more formidable appearance, and the very look of him was enough to scare a minnow out of a year's growth.

But, notwithstanding all changes, the two great interests of his every-day life continued to be just what they had always been—namely, to get enough to eat, and to keep out of the way of his enemies; for enemies he still had, and would have as long as he lived. The fly-fishermen, with their feather-weight rods and their scientific tackle, came every spring and summer; and only the wisdom born of experience kept him from falling into their hands. Several times he met with an otter, and had to run for his life. Once, a black bear, fishing for suckers, came near catching a brook trout. And perhaps the very closest of all his close calls came one day when some river-drivers exploded a stick of dynamite in the water to break up a log-jam. The trout was some distance up the stream at the time, but the concussion stunned him so that he floated at the surface, wrong side up, for several minutes before his senses gradually came back. That is a fish's way of fainting.

His luck stayed by him, however, and none of these things ever did him any serious harm. His reign proved a long one, and as the years went by he came to exercise a more and more autocratic sway over the smaller fry. For in spite of his age he was still growing. A trout has an advantage over a land animal in this, that he is not obliged to use any of his food as fuel for keeping himself warm. He can't keep warm anyhow—not as long as he lives in the water—and so he doesn't try, but devotes everything he eats to enlarging his body and repairing wear and tear. If nothing happens to put a stop to the process, he seems to be able to keep it up almost indefinitely. But the size of the stream in which he lives appears to limit him to a certain extent. Probably the largest trout stream in the world is the Nepigon, and they say that seventeen-pounders were caught there in the early days. Our friend's native river was a rather small one. In the course of time, however, he attained a weight of very nearly three pounds, and I doubt if he would ever have been much larger. Perhaps it was fitting that his reign should end there.

But it seems a great pity that it could not have ended in a more imposing manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen better than any other trout in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a victim to a little Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse string for a line, and salt pork for bait.

I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if he had stayed at home; but one spring he took it into his head to go on an exploring expedition out into Lake Superior. I understand that his cousins in the streams of eastern Canada sometimes visit salt water in somewhat the same manner, and that they thereupon lose the bright trimmings of their coats and become a plain silver-gray. Superior did not affect our friend in that way, but something worse happened to him—he lost his common-sense. Perhaps his interest in his new surroundings was so great that he forgot the lessons of wisdom and experience which it had cost him so much to learn.

In the course of his wanderings he came to where a school of perch were loafing in the shadow of a wharf; and just as he pushed his way in among them, that little white piece of fat pork sank slowly down through the green water. It was something new to the trout; he didn't quite know what to make of it. But the perch seemed to think it was good, and they would be sure to eat it if he didn't; and so, although the string was in plain sight and ought to have been a sufficient warning, he exercised his royal prerogative, shouldered those yellow-barred plebeians out of the way, and took the tid-bit for himself. It is too humiliating; let us draw a veil over that closing scene.

The King of the Trout Stream had gone the way of his fathers, and another reigned in his stead.



THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX

THE Canada lynx came down the runway that follows the high bank along the northern shore of the Glimmerglass, his keen, silvery eyes watching the woods for foe or prey, and his big feet padding softly on the dead leaves. He was old, was the Canada lynx, and he had grown very tall and gaunt, but this afternoon his years sat lightly on him. And in a moment more they had vanished entirely, and he was as young as ever he was in his life, for, as he stepped cautiously around a little spruce, he came upon another lynx, nearly as tall as he, and quite as handsome in her early winter coat. They both stopped short and stared. And no wonder. Each of them was decidedly worth looking at, especially if the one who did the looking happened to be another lynx of the opposite sex.

He was some twenty-odd inches in height and about three and a half feet in length, and had a most villanous cast of countenance, a very wicked-looking set of teeth, and claws that were two inches long and so heavy and strong and sharp that you could sometimes hear them crunch into the bark when he climbed a tree. His long hind legs, heavy buttocks, thick fore-limbs, and big, clumsy-looking paws told of a magnificent set of muscles pulling and sliding and hauling under his cloak. She was nearly as large as he, and very much like him in general appearance. Both of them wore long, thick fur, of a lustrous steel-gray color, with paler shades underneath, and darker trimmings along their back-bones and up and down their legs. Their paws were big and broad and furry, their tails were stubby and short, and they wore heavy, grizzled whiskers on the sides of their jaws and mustachios under their noses, while from the tips of their ears rose tassels of stiff, dark hairs that had an uncommonly jaunty effect. Altogether they looked very fierce and imposing and war-like—perhaps rather more so than was justified by their actual prowess. So it was not surprising that they took to each other. Perhaps he wasn't really quite as heroic as he appeared, but that's not uncommon among other lovers besides those belonging to the lynx tribe, and what difference did it make, anyhow, as long as she didn't know it?

That winter was a hard one. The cold was intense, the snow was very deep, and the storms came often. Spruce hens and partridges were scarce, even rabbits were hard to find, and sometimes it seemed to the two lynxes as if they were the only animals left in the woods. Except the deer. There were always plenty of deer down in the cedar swamp, and their tracks were as plain as a lumberman's logging road. But although the lynxes sometimes killed and ate young fawns in the summertime, they seldom tasted venison in the winter. It was well for them that they had each other, for when one failed in the hunt the other sometimes succeeded, yet I cannot help thinking that the old male, especially, might perhaps have been of more use to his mate if he had not confined his hunting so entirely to the smaller animals. More than once he sat on a branch of a tree and watched a buck or doe go by, and his claws twitched and his eyes blazed, and he fairly trembled with eagerness and excitement as he saw the big gray creature pass, all unconscious, beneath his perch. Splendidly armed as he was, it would seem as though he must have succeeded if only he had jumped and risked a tussle. But he never tried it. I suppose he was afraid. And yet—such were the contradictions of his nature—one dark night he trotted half a mile after a shanty-boy who was going home with a haunch of venison over his shoulder, and was just gathering himself for a spring, intending to leap on him from behind, when another man appeared. Two against one was not fair, he thought, and he gave it up and beat a retreat without either of them seeing him. They found his footprints the next morning in their snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy had a revolver in his pocket.

Aside from any question of heroism, I am afraid that he was not really as wise and discriminating as he looked. I have an idea that when Nature manufactured him she thought he did not need as much wisdom or as many wits as some of the other people of the woods, inasmuch as he was larger and stronger and better armed than most of them. Except possibly the bear, who was altogether too easy-going to molest him, there was not one of the animals that could thrash him, and they all knew it and let him alone. You can often manage very well without brains if only you have the necessary teeth and muscle and claws; and the old lynx had them, without a doubt. But I fear that Nature, in adapting a wild animal to his environment, now and then forgets to allow for the human element in the problem. Brains are a good thing to have, after all. Even to a lynx the time is pretty sure to come, sooner or later, when he needs them in his business. Your fellow-citizens of the woods may treat you with all due respect, but the trapper won't, and he'll get you if you don't watch out.

One day he found some more snow-shoe tracks, just like those that the shanty-boy had left, and instead of running away, as he ought to have done, and as most of the animals would have had sense enough to do, he followed them up to see where they led. He wasn't particularly hungry that day, and there was absolutely no excuse for what he did. It certainly wasn't bravery that inspired him, for he had not the least idea of attacking anyone. It was simply a case of foolish curiosity. He followed the trail a long way, not walking directly in it, but keeping just a little to one side, wallowing heavily as he went, for a foot and a half of light, fluffy snow had fallen the day before, and the walking was very bad. Presently he caught sight of a little piece of scarlet cloth fastened to a stick that stood upright in a drift. It ought to have been another warning to him, but it only roused his curiosity to a still higher pitch, as the trapper knew it would. He sat down in the snow and considered. The thing didn't really look as if it were good to eat, and yet it might be. The only way to find out would be to go up to it and taste it. But, eatable or not, such a bright bit of color was certainly very attractive to the eye. You would think so yourself if you hadn't seen anything scarlet since last summer's wild-flowers faded. Finally, he got up and walked slowly toward it, and the first thing he knew a steel trap had him by the right foreleg.

The way of the foolish is sometimes as hard as that of the transgressor. For a few minutes he was the very maddest cat in all the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, and he yelled and howled and caterwauled at the top of his voice, and jumped and tore around as if he was crazy. But, of course, that sort of thing did him no good, and after a while he quieted down and took things a little more calmly. Instead of being made fast to a tree, the trap was bound by a short chain to a heavy wooden clog, and he found that by pulling with all his might he could drag it at a snail's pace through the snow. So off he went on three legs, hauling the trap and clog by the fourth, with the blood oozing out around the steel jaws and leaving a line of bright crimson stains behind him. The strain on his foot hurt him cruelly, but a great fear was in his heart, and he knew that he must go away or die. So he pushed on, hour after hour, stopping now and then to rest for a few minutes in a thicket of cedar or hemlock, but soon gathering his strength for another effort. How he growled and snarled with rage and pain, and how his great eyes flamed as he looked ahead to see what was before him, or back along his trail to know if the trapper was coming!

It was a terrible journey that he made that night, and the hours dragged by slow as his pace and heavy as his clog. He was heading toward the hollow tree by the Glimmerglass that he and his mate called home, but he had not made more than half the distance, and his strength was nearly gone. Half-way between midnight and dawn he reached the edge of a steep and narrow gully that lay straight across his path. The moon had risen some time before, and the white slopes gleamed and shone in the frosty light, all the whiter by contrast with the few bushes and trees that were scattered up and down the little valley. The lynx stood on the brink and studied the proposition before him. It would be hard, hard work to climb the farther side, dragging that heavy clog, but at least it ought to be easy going down. He scrambled over the edge, hauling the clog after him till it began to roll of its own accord. The chain slackened, and he leaped forward. It was good to be able to jump again. But he jumped too far, or tried to, and the chain tightened with a jerk that brought him down head-first in the snow. Before he could recover himself the clog shot past him, and the chain jerked again and sent him heels over head. And then cat, trap, and clog all went rolling over and over down the slope, and landed in a heap at the bottom. All the breath and the spirit were knocked out of him, and for a long time he could do nothing but lie still in the snow, trembling with weakness and pain, and moaning miserably. It must have been half an hour before he could pull himself together again, and then, just as he was about to begin the climb up the far side of the gully, he suddenly discovered that he was no longer alone. Off to the left, among some thick bushes, he saw the lurking form of a timber-wolf. He looked to the right, and there was another. Behind him was a third, and he thought he saw several others still farther away, slinking from bush to bush, and gradually drawing nearer. Ordinarily they would hardly have dreamed of tackling him, and, if they had mustered up sufficient courage to attempt to overpower him by mere force of numbers, he would simply have climbed a tree and laughed at them. But now it was different.

The lynx cowered down in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever suffered as he did. Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed and eaten almost before they knew what was coming; but he had to lie still and see his enemies slowly closing in upon him, knowing all the time that he could not fight to any advantage, and that to fly was utterly impossible. But when the last moment arrived he must have braced up and given a good account of himself. At least that was what the trapper decided when he came a few hours later to look for his trap. The lynx was gone—not even a broken bone of him was left—but there in the trodden and blood-stained snow was the record of an awful struggle. There must have been something heroic about him, after all.

For the rest of the winter his widow had to hunt alone. This was not such a great hardship in itself, for they had frequently gone out separately on their marauding expeditions—more often, perhaps, than they had gone together. But now there was never anyone to curl up beside her in the hollow tree and help her keep warm, or to share his kill with her when her own was unsuccessful. And when the spring should come and bring her a family of kittens, she would have to take on her own shoulders the whole burden of parental responsibility. Or, rather, the burden was already there, for if she did not find enough meat to keep herself in good health the babies would be weak and wizened and unpromising, with small chance of growing up to be a credit to her or a satisfaction to themselves. So she hunted night and day, and, on the whole, with very good results. To tell the truth, I think she was rather more skilful in the chase than her mate had been, and this seems to be a not uncommon state of things in cat families. Perhaps feminine fineness of instinct and lightness of tread are better adapted to the still-hunt than the greater clumsiness and awkwardness of masculinity. Or, is there something deeper than that? Has something whispered to these savage mothers that on their success depends more than their own lives, and that it is their sacred duty to kill, kill, kill? However that may be, she proved herself a mighty huntress before the Lord. Her eye was keen, and her foot was sure, and she made terrible havoc among the rabbits and partridges.

And yet there were times when even she was hungry and tired and disheartened. Once, on a clear, keen, cold winter night when all the great white world seemed frozen to death, she serenaded a land-looker who had made his bed in a deserted lumber-camp and was trying to sleep. She had eaten almost nothing for several days, and she knew that her strength was ebbing. That very evening she had fallen short in a flying leap at a rabbit, and had seen him dive head-first into his burrow, safe by the merest fraction of an inch. She had fairly screeched with rage and disappointment, and as the hours went by and she found no other game, she grew so blue and discouraged that she really couldn't contain herself any longer. Perhaps it did her good to have a cry. For two hours the land-looker lay in his bunk and listened to a wailing that made his heart fairly sink within him. Now it was a piercing scream, now it was a sob, and now it died away in a low moan, only to rise again, wilder and more agonized than ever. He knew without a doubt that it was only some kind of a cat—knew it just as well as he knew that his compass needle pointed north. Yet there had been times in his land-looking experience when he had been ready to swear that the needle was pointing south-southeast; and to-night, in spite of his certain knowledge that the voice he heard was that of a lynx or a wild-cat or cougar, he couldn't help being almost dead sure that it came from a woman in distress, there was in it such a note of human anguish and despair. Twice he got half-way out of bed to go to her assistance, and then lay down again and called himself a fool. At last he could stand it no longer, and taking a burning brand from the broken stove that stood in the centre of the room, he went to the door and looked out. The great arc-light of the moon had checkered the snow-crust with inky shadows, and patches of dazzling white. The cold air struck him like needles, and he said to himself that it was no wonder that either a cat or a woman should cry if she had to stay out in the snow on such a night. The moaning and wailing ceased as he opened the door, but now two round spots of flame shone out of a black shadow and stared at him unwinkingly. The lynx's pupils were wide open, and the golden-yellow tapeta in the backs of her eyeballs were glowing like incandescent lamps. It was no woman. No human eyes could ever shine like that. The land-looker threw the brand with all his might; an ugly snarl came from the shadow, and he saw a big gray animal go tearing away across the hard, smooth crust in a curious kind of gallop, taking three or four yards at a bound, coming down on all four feet at once, and spring forward again as if she was made of rubber. He shut the door and went back to bed.

That was the end of the concert, and, as it turned out, it was also the end of the lynx's troubles, at least for the time being. Half an hour later, as she was loping along in the moonlight, she thought she heard a faint sound from beneath her feet. She stood still to listen, and the next minute she was sure. During the last heavy snow-storm three partridges had dived into a drift for shelter from the wind and the cold, and such a thick, hard crust had formed over their heads that they had not been able to get out again. She resurrected them in short order and reinterred them after a fashion of her own, and then she went home to her hollow tree and slept the sleep of those who have done what Nature tells them to, and whose consciences are clear and whose stomachs full.

That was her nearest approach to starvation. She never was quite so hungry again, and in the early spring she had a great piece of luck. Not very far from her hollow tree she met a buck that had been mortally wounded by a hunter. He had had strength enough to run away, and to throw his pursuer off his track, but there was very little fight left in him. In such a case as this she was quite ready to attack, and it did not take her long to finish him. Probably it was a merciful release, for he had suffered greatly in the last few days. Fortunately no wolves or other large animals found him, and he gave her meat till after the kittens had come and she had begun to grow well and strong again.

The kittens were a great success—two of the finest she had ever had, and she had had many. But at first, of course, they were rather insignificant-looking—just two little balls of reddish-brown fur that turned over once in a while and mewed for their dinner. Some of the scientific men say that a new-born baby has no mind, but only a blank something that appears to be capable of receiving and retaining impressions, and that may in certain cases have tendencies. There is reason for thinking that the baby lynxes had tendencies. But imagine, if you can, what their first impressions were like. And remember that they were blind, and that if their ears heard sounds they certainly did not comprehend them. Sometimes they were cold and hungry and lonesome, and that was an impression of the wrong sort. They did not know what the trouble was, but something was the matter, that was certain, and they cried about it, like other babies. Then would come a great, warm, comforting presence, and all would be right again; and that was a very pleasant impression, indeed. I don't suppose they knew exactly what had been done to them. Probably they were not definitely aware that their empty stomachs had been filled, or that their shrinking, shivering little bodies were snuggled down in somebody's thick fur coat, or that somebody's warm red tongue was licking and stroking and caressing them. Much less could they have known how that big, strong, comforting somebody came to be there, or how many harmless and guiltless little lives had been snuffed out to give her life and to enable her to give it to them. But they knew that all was well with them, and that everything was just as it should be—and they took another nap.



By and by they began to look about for impressions, and were no longer content with lying still and taking only what came to them. They seemed to acquire a mental appetite for impressions that was almost as ravenous as their stomachs' appetite for milk, and their weak little legs were forced to lift their squat little bodies and carry them on exploring expeditions around the inside of the hollow tree, where they bumped their heads against the walls, and stumbled and fell down over the inequalities of the floor. They got a good many impressions during these excursions, and some of them were mental and some were physical. And sometimes they explored their mother, and went scrambling and sprawling all over her, probably getting about as well acquainted with her as it is possible to be with a person whom one has never seen. For their eyes were still closed, and they must have known her only as a big, kind, loving, furry thing, that fed them, and warmed them, and licked them, and made them feel good, and yet was almost as vague and indefinite as something in a dream. But the hour came at last when for the first time they saw the light of day shining in through the hole in the side of their tree. And while they were looking at it—and probably blinking at it—a footstep sounded outside, the hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in—a face with big, unwinking eyes, pointed, tufted ears, and a thick whisker brushed back from under its chin. Do you suppose they recognized their mother? I don't believe they did. But when she jumped in beside them, then they knew her, and the impression they gained that day was one of the most wonderful of all.

In looks, these kittens of the woods were not so very different from those of the backyard, except that they were bigger and perhaps a little clumsier, and that their paws were very large, and their tails very short and stubby. They grew stronger as the days went on, and their legs did not wobble quite so much when they went travelling around the inside of the tree. And they learned to use their ears as well as their eyes. They knew what their mother's step meant at the entrance, and they liked to hear her purr.

Other sounds there were which they did not understand so well, and to most of which they gave little heed—the scream of the rabbit when the big gray cat leaps on him from behind a bush; the scolding of the red squirrel, disturbed and angry at the sight, and fearful that he may be the next victim; the bark of the fox; the rasping of the porcupine's teeth; and oftenest of all the pleasant rustling and whispering of the trees, for by this time the sun and the south wind had come back and done their work, and the voice of the leaves was heard in the land. All these noises of the woods, and many others besides, came to them from outside the walls of the tree, from a vast, mysterious region of which as yet they knew nothing except that their mother often went there. She was beginning to think that they were big enough and old enough to learn something more about it, and so one day she led them out of the hole, and they saw the sunshine, and the blue of the sky, and the green of the trees, and the whiteness of the sailing clouds, and the beauty of the Glimmerglass. But I don't think they appreciated the wonder and the glory of it all, or paid as much attention to it as they ought. They were too much interested in making their legs work properly, for their knees were still rather weak, and were apt to give out all of a sudden, and to let a fellow sit down when he didn't want to. And the dry leaves and little sticks kept sliding around under one's feet so that one never knew what was going to happen next. It was very different from the hollow tree, and they were glad when their mother picked them up one at a time by the back of the neck, carried them home, gave them their supper, and told them to lie still and take a nap while she went after another rabbit.

But they had really done very well, considering that it was their first day out. One of them in particular was very smart and precocious, and she had taken much pleasure in watching the independent way in which he went staggering about, looking for impressions. And the other was not far behind him. Her long hours of still-hunting had brought their rich reward, and her babies were all that she could ask.

She was in the habit of occasionally bringing something home for them to play with—a wood-mouse, perhaps, or a squirrel, or a partridge, or even a larger animal; and they played with it with a vengeance, shaking and worrying it, and spitting and growling and snarling over it in the most approved fashion. And you should have seen them the first time they saw their mother catch a rabbit. They did not try to help her, for she had told them not to, but they watched her as if it was a matter of life and death—as, indeed, it was, but not to them. The rabbit was nibbling some tender young sprouts. The old lynx crept up behind him very quietly and stealthily, and the kittens' eyes stuck out farther and farther as they saw her gradually work up within leaping distance. They nearly jumped out of their skins with excitement when at last she gave a bound and landed with both forepaws on the middle of his back. And when the rabbit screamed out in his fright and pain, they could not contain themselves any longer, but rushed in and helped finish him. They seemed to understand the game as perfectly as if they had been practising it for years. I suppose that was where their tendencies came in.

A few days later they had another experience—or at least one of them did. Their mother happened to see two little wood-mice run under a small, half-decayed log, and she put her forefeet against it and rolled it half-way over; and then, while she held it there, the larger Kitten—the one who had made the better record the day they first left the den—thrust his paw under and grabbed one of them. The other mouse got away, but I don't think the Kitten cared very much. He had made his first kill, and that was glory enough for one day.

From wood-mice the kittens progressed to chipmunks, and from them to larger game. With use and exercise their soft baby muscles grew hard and strong, and it was not long before they were able to follow the old lynx almost anywhere, to the tops of the tallest trees, over the roughest ground, and through the densest thickets. And they learned other things besides how to walk and climb and hunt. Their mother was a good teacher and a rather rigid disciplinarian, and very early in life they were taught that they must obey promptly and without question, and that on certain occasions it was absolutely necessary to keep perfectly still and not make the slightest sound. For instance, there was the time when the whole family lay sprawled out on a limb of a tree, fifteen or twenty feet up from the ground, and watched the land-looker go by with his half-axe over his shoulder, his compass in his hand, and a note-book sticking out of his pocket. They were so motionless, and the grayish color of their fur matched so well with the bark of the tree, that he never saw them, although for a moment they were right over his head, and could have leaped to his shoulders as easily as not.

In short, the kittens were learning to take care of themselves, and it was well that they were, for one day their mother was taken from them in a strange, sad way, and there was nothing they could do but cry, and try to follow her, and at last see her pass out of sight, still looking back and calling to them pitifully. It was the river that carried her off, and it was a floating saw-log that she rode upon, an unwilling passenger. The trouble began with a steel trap, just as it did in their father's case. Traps are not nearly as much to be feared in summer or early fall as in winter, for the simple reason that one's fur is not as valuable in warm weather as in cold. The lynx's, for instance, was considerably shorter and thinner than it had been in the preceding December, when she and her mate first met, and it had taken on a reddish tinge, as if the steel had begun to rust a trifle. But the killing machines are to be found occasionally at all seasons of the year, and somebody had set this one down by the edge of the water—not the Glimmerglass, but a branch of the Tahquamenon River—and had chained it to a log that had been hung up in last spring's drive. When she first felt its grip on her leg she yelled and tore around just as her mate had done, while the kittens looked on in wonder and amazement. They had seen their mother in many moods, but never in one like this. But by and by she grew weary, and a little later it began to rain. She was soon soaking wet, and as the hours dragged on every ounce of courage and gumption seemed to ooze out of her. If the trapper had come then he would have found her very meek and limp. Possibly she would have been ready to fight him for her children's sakes, but nothing else could have nerved her to it. But she was not put to any such test; the trapper did not come.

It rained very hard, and it rained very long. In fact it had been raining most of the time for two or three days before the lynx found the trap, and in a few more hours the Great Tahquamenon Swamp was as full of water as a soaked sponge, and the river was rising rapidly. The lynx was soon lying in a puddle, and to get out of it she climbed upon the log and stretched herself out on the wet, brown bark. Still the river rose, and by and by the log began to stir in its bed, as if it were thinking of renewing its voyage. At last, when she had been there nearly twenty-four hours, and was faint with hunger, as well as cold and wet, it quietly swung out into the current and drifted away down the stream. She was an excellent swimmer, and she promptly jumped overboard and tried to reach the shore, but of course the chain put a stop to that. Weakened by fasting, and borne down by the weight of the trap, she came very near drowning before she could scramble up again over the end of the log and seat herself amidships.

The kittens were foraging among the bushes, but she called to them in a tone which told them plainly enough that some new trouble had befallen her, and they hurried down to the water's edge, and stood there, mewing piteously. She implored them to follow her, and after much persuasion the bigger and bolder of the two plunged bravely in. But he didn't get very far. It was very cold and very wet, and he wasn't used to swimming. Besides, the water got into his nose and made him sneeze, which distracted his attention so that for a moment he forgot all about his mother, and just turned around and hustled back to the shore as fast as he could go. After that he, contented himself with following along the bank and keeping as near her as he could. Once the log drifted in so close that she thought she could jump ashore, and the Kitten watched eagerly as she gathered herself for the spring. But the chain was too short, and she fell into the water. Her forepaw just grazed the grass-tuft where the Kitten was standing, and for an instant she felt the blades slipping between her toes; but the next moment she was swimming for the log again, and the Kitten was mewing his sympathy at the top of his voice.

They journeyed on for nearly an hour longer, she on her prison-ship, and he on land; and then, before either of them knew just what had happened, the little tributary had emptied itself into the main stream of the Tahquamenon, and they suddenly realized that they were much farther apart than they had been at any time before. This new river was several times as broad as the one on which the voyage had begun, and the wind was steadily carrying her away from the shore, while the current bore her resistlessly on in its long, slow voyage to Lake Superior. She was still calling to him, but her voice was growing fainter and fainter in the distance, and so, at last, she passed out of his sight and hearing forever.



And then, for the first time, he missed his brother. The other kitten had always been a trifle the slower of the two, and in some way he had dropped behind. Our friend was alone in the world.

But the same river that had carried his mother away brought him a little comfort in his desolation, for down by the water's edge, cast up on the sand by a circling eddy, he found a dead sucker. He ate it with relish, and felt better in spite of himself. It made a very large meal for a lynx of his size, and by the time he had finished it he began to be drowsy, so he picked out the driest spot he could find, under the thick branches of a large hemlock, and curled himself up on the brown needles and went to sleep.

The next day he had to hustle for a living, and the next it was the same, and the next, and the next. As the weeks and the months went by there was every indication that life would be little else than one long hustle—or perhaps a short one—and in spite of all he could do there were times when he was very near the end of the chapter. But his mother's lessons stood him in good stead, and he was exceedingly well armed for the chase. It would have been hard to find in all the woods any teeth better adapted than his to the work of pulling a fellow-creature to pieces. In front, on both the upper and lower jaws, were the chisel-shaped incisors. Flanking them were the canines, very long and slender, and very sharply pointed, thrusting themselves into the meat like the tines of a carving-fork, and tearing it away in great shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth that were still larger, but shorter and broader, and shaped more like notched knife-blades. Those of the lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears, and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks into pieces small enough to go down his throat. By the time he got through with a partridge there was not much left of it but a puddle of brown feathers. His claws, too, were very long and white, and very wickedly curved; and before starting out on a hunt he would often get up on his hind legs and sharpen those of his forefeet on a tree-trunk, just as your house-cat sharpens hers on the leg of the kitchen-table. When he wasn't using them he kept them hidden between his toes, so that they would not be constantly catching and breaking on roots and things; but all he had to do when he wanted them was to pull certain muscles, and out they came, ready to scratch and tear to his heart's content. They were not by any means full grown as yet, but they bade fair to equal his father's some day. He was warmly and comfortably clothed, of course, and along his sides and flanks the hair hung especially thick and long, to protect his body when he was obliged to wade through light, fluffy snow. When there was a crust he didn't need it, for his paws were so big and broad and hairy that at such times they bore him up almost as well as if they had been two pairs of snow-shoes.

But, well armed, well clad, and well shod though he was, it was fortunate for the Kitten that his first winter was a mild one—mild, that is, for the Glimmerglass country. Otherwise things might have gone very hard with him, and they were none too easy as it was. There were days when he was even hungrier than his mother had been the night she serenaded the land-looker, and it was on one of these occasions that he found a porcupine in a tree and tried to make a meal of him. That was a memorable experience. The porky was sitting in a crotch, doing nothing in particular, and when the Kitten approached he simply put his nose down and his quills up. The Kitten spat at him contemptuously, but without any apparent effect. Then he put out a big forepaw and tapped him lightly on the forehead. The porcupine flipped his tail, and the Kitten jumped back, and spat and hissed harder than ever. He didn't quite know what to make of this singular-looking creature, but he was young and rash, besides being awfully, awfully hungry, and in another minute he pitched in.

The next thing they knew, the porcupine had dropped to the ground, where he lit in a snow-bank, and presently picked himself up and waddled off to another tree, while the Kitten—well, the Kitten just sat in the crotch and cried as hard as ever he could cry. There were quills in his nose, and quills in his side, and quills in both his forepaws; and every motion was agony. He himself never knew exactly how he got rid of them all, so of course I can't tell you. A few of those that were caught only by their very tips may possibly have dropped out, but it is probable that most of them broke off and left their points to work deeper and deeper into the flesh until the skin finally closed over them and they disappeared. I have no doubt that pieces of those quills are still wandering about in various parts of his anatomy, like the quart of lead that "Little Bobs" carries around with him, according to Mr. Kipling. It was weeks before he ceased to feel the pain of them.

For several days after this mishap it was impossible for him to hunt, and he would certainly have starved to death if it had not been for a cougar who providentially came to the Glimmerglass on a short visit. The Kitten found his tracks in the snow the very next day, and cautiously followed them up, limping as he went, to see what the big fellow had been doing. For a mile or more the large, round, shapeless footprints—very much like his own, but on a bigger scale—were spaced so regularly that it was evident the cougar had been simply walking along at a very leisurely gait, with nothing to disturb his frame of mind. But after a while the record showed a remarkable change. The footprints were only a few inches apart, and his cougarship had carried himself so low that his body had dragged in the snow and left a deep furrow behind. The Kitten knew what that meant. He had been there himself, though not after the same kind of prey. And then the trail stopped entirely, and for a space the snow lay fresh and virgin and untrodden. But twenty feet away was the spot where the cougar had come down on all-fours, only to leap forward again like a ricochetting cannon-ball; and twenty-five feet farther lay the greater part of the carcass of a deer.

The Kitten stuffed himself as full as he could hold, and then climbed a tree and watched. About midnight the cougar appeared, and after he had eaten his fill and gone away again the Kitten slipped down and ate some more. He was making up for lost time. For four successive nights the cougar came and feasted on venison, but after that the Kitten never saw him or heard of him again. There was still a goodly quantity of meat left, and it seems somewhat curious that he did not return for it, but he was a stranger in those parts, and it is probable that he went back to his old haunts, up toward Whitefish Point, perhaps, or the Grand Sable. Anyhow, it was very nice for the Kitten, for that deer kept him in provisions until he was able to take up hunting once more.

He had one rather exciting experience during this period. One day, just as he was finishing a very enjoyable meal of venison tenderloin, he heard the tramp of snow-shoes on the crust, and in a moment more that same land-looker came pacing down a section line and halted squarely in front of him. Now there are trappers who say that a Canada lynx is a fool and a coward, that he will run from a small dog, and that he makes his living entirely by preying on animals that are weaker and more poorly armed than he. I admit, of course, that the majority of lynxes do not go ramming around the woods with chips on their shoulders, looking for hunters armed with bowie-knives and repeating rifles. You wouldn't, either—not as long as there were rabbits to be had for the stalking. But on this occasion the Kitten's conduct certainly savored of recklessness, if not of real bravery. Being entirely unacquainted with the land-looking profession, he naturally supposed that the man had come for his deer. And he didn't propose to let him have it. He considered that that venison belonged to him, and he took his stand on the carcass, laid his ears back, showed his white teeth, made his eyes blaze, and spit and growled and snarled defiantly. The land-looker didn't quite know what to do. His section line lay straight across the deer's body, and he did not want to leave it for fear of confusing his reckoning, but the Kitten, though only half grown, looked uncommonly business-like. He had no gun, nor even a revolver, for he was hunting for pine, not fresh meat. He had left his half-axe in camp, and when he felt in his pocket for his jack-knife it was not there. Then he looked about for a club. He had been told that lynxes always had very thin skulls, and that a light blow on the back of the head was enough to kill the biggest and fiercest of them, let alone a kitten. But he couldn't even find a stick that would answer his purpose.

"Well," he said, when they had stared at each other a minute or two longer without coming to any understanding, "I suppose if you won't turn out for me, I'll have to turn out for you"; and he made a careful circuit at a respectful distance, picked up his line again, and went on his way.

The winter dragged on very slowly, with many ups and downs, but it was gone at last. Summer was easier, if only because he was not obliged to use up any of his vitality in keeping warm. Sometimes, indeed, he was really too warm for comfort, so he presently changed his coat and put on a thinner one. People like to talk about the coolness of the deep woods, but the truth is that there isn't any place much hotter and stuffier than a dense growth of timber, where the wind never comes, and where the air is heavy and still. And then there are the windfalls and the old burnings, where the sun beats fiercely down among the fallen trees till the blackened soil is hot as a city pavement, and where dead trunks and half-burned logs lie thrown together in the wildest confusion—places which are almost impassable for men, and which even the land-lookers avoid whenever they can, but which a cat will thread as readily as the locomotive follows the rails. These were the localities which the Kitten was most fond of frequenting, and here his youth slipped rapidly away. He was fast becoming an adult lynx.

The summer passed, and half the autumn; the first snow came and went, and again the Kitten put on his winter coat of gray, with the white underneath, and the dark trimmings up and down his legs and along his back. What with his mustachios, and his whiskers, and the tassels on his ears, he was a very presentable young lynx. It would be many years before he could hope to be as large and powerful as his father, but, nevertheless, he was making remarkably good progress. And the time was at hand when he would need both his good looks and his muscle.

Since his mother had left him he had seen only two or three lynxes, and those were all much older and larger than he, and not well suited to be his companions. But history repeats itself. One Indian-summer afternoon he was tramping along the northern bank of the Glimmerglass, just as his father had done two years before, and as he rounded a bend in the path he came face to face with someone who was enough like him to have been his twin sister. And they did as his parents had done, stood still for a minute or two and looked at each other as if they had just found out what they were made for. After all, life is something more than hustling for a living, even in the woods.

But just then something else happened, and another ruling passion came into play—the old instinct of the chase, which neither of them could very long forget. A faint "Quack, quack, quack," came up from the lake, and they crept to the edge of the bank, side by side, and looked down. Above them the trees stood dreamily motionless in the mellow sunshine. Below was a steep slope of ten or fifteen feet; beyond it a tiny strip of sandy beach, and then the quiet water. A squadron of ducks, on their way from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf, had taken stop-over checks for the Glimmerglass; and now they came loitering along through the dead bulrushes, murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious minnows and snails, and pausing a moment now and then to put their heads under and dabble in the mud for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes crouched and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously, their long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their paws fumbled about among the dry pine-needles, feeling for the very best footing for the flying leap. The ducks came on, still prattling pleasantly over their own private affairs. Closer and closer they swam, without a thought of death waiting for them at the top of the bank, and suddenly four splendid sets of muscles jerked like bowstrings, four long hind-legs straightened with a mighty thrust and shove, and two big gray creatures shot out from the brink and came sailing down through the air with their heads up, their tails on end, their eyes blazing, and their forepaws stretched out to grab the nearest unhappy duck. The flock broke up with frightened cries and a wonderful whirring of wings, and in a moment more they were far away and going like the very wind.



But two of its members stayed behind, and presently the lynxes waded out on the beach and sat down to eat their supper together. They talked as much over that meal as the ducks had over theirs, but the lynx language is very different from that of the water-fowl. Instead of soft, gentle murmurings there were low growls and snarls as the long, white claws and teeth tore the warm red flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been a pleasant conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose they enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee. In truth they had good reason to be satisfied and contented with themselves and each other, and with what they had just done, for not every flying leap is so successful, and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two that they were discussing. So they talked on in angry, threatening tones, that sounded like quarrelling, but that really meant only a fierce, savage kind of pleasure; and when the meal was ended, and the very last shred of duck-flesh had disappeared, they washed their faces, and purred, and lay still a while to visit and get acquainted.

There were many other meetings during the weeks that followed—some under as pleasant circumstances as the first, and some not. Perhaps the best were those of the clear, sharp days of early winter, when the sky was blue, and the sunshine was bright, and a thin carpet of fine, dry snow covered the floor of the forest. It was cold, of course; but they were young and strong and healthy, and their fur was thick and warm, like the garments of a Canadian girl. The keen air set the live blood leaping and dancing, and they frisked and frolicked, and romped and played, and rolled each other over and over in the snow, and were as wildly and deliciously happy as it is ever given to two animals to be.

It was too good to last long without some kind of an interruption, and one glorious winter evening, when the full moon was flooding the woods with the white light that brings a touch of madness, a third young lynx came upon the scene. And then there was trouble. The Kitten's new friend sat back in the bushes and looked on, while he and his rival squatted face to face in the snow and sassed each other to the utmost limits of the lynx vocabulary, their voices rising and falling in a hideous duet, and their eyes gleaming and glowing with a pale, yellow-green fire. Presently there was a rush, and the fur began to fly. The snow flew, too; and the woods rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling, and spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits heard it, and trembled; and the partridges, down in the cedar swamp, glanced furtively over their shoulders and were glad it was no nearer. They bit and scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker in the bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over the strenuous way in which they strove for her favors. First one was on top, and then the other. Now our Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail. One minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's throats more savagely than ever. It was really more difficult than you would suppose for either of them to get a good hold of the other, partly because their fur was so thick, and partly because Nature had purposely made their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances as this. But they managed to do a good deal of damage, nevertheless; and in the end the pretender was thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who was at the bottom of all this unpleasantness. His ears were slit; one eye was shut, and the lid of the other hung very low; he limped badly with his right hind-leg, and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast and sides. But he didn't care. He had won his spurs.

The story of the Kitten is told, for he was a kitten no longer.



POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL

HE wasn't handsome—the original owner of this quill—and I can't say that he was very smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely old porky who once lived by the Glimmerglass. But in spite of his slow wits and his homeliness a great many things happened to him in the course of his life.

He was born in a hollow hemlock log, on a wild April morning, when the north wind was whipping the lake with snow, and when winter seemed to have come back for a season. The Glimmerglass was neither glimmering nor glassy that morning, but he and his mother were snug and warm in their wooden nest, and they cared little for the storm that was raging outside.

It has been said by some that porcupines lay eggs, the hard, smooth shells of which are furnished by a kind and thoughtful Providence for the protection of the mothers from their prickly offspring until the latter have fairly begun their independent existence. Other people say that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one of them is always dead before it is born. But when my Porcupine discovered America he had neither a shell on his back nor a dead twin brother by his side. Neither was he prickly. He was covered all over with soft, furry, dark-brown hair. If you had searched carefully along the middle of his back you might possibly have found the points of the first quills, just peeping through the skin; but as yet the thick fur hid them from sight and touch unless you knew just where and how to look for them.

He was a very large baby, larger even than a new-born bear cub, and no doubt his mother felt a justifiable pride in his size and his general peartness. She was certainly very careful of him and very anxious for his safety, for she kept him out of sight, and no one ever saw him during those first days and weeks of his babyhood. She did not propose to have any lynxes or wild-cats or other ill-disposed neighbors fondling him until his quills were grown. After that they might give him as many love-pats as they pleased.

He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies do. Long hairs, tipped with yellowish-white, came out through the dense fur, and by and by the quills began to show. His teeth were lengthening, too, as his mother very well knew, and between the sharp things in his mouth and those on his back and sides he was fast becoming a very formidable nursling. Before he was two months old she was forced to wean him, but by that time he was quite able to travel down to the beach and feast on the tender lily-pads and arrow-head leaves that grew in the shallow water, within easy reach from fallen and half-submerged tree-trunks.

One June day, as he and his mother were fishing for lily-pads, each of them out on the end of a big log, a boy came down the steep bank that rose almost from the water's edge. He wasn't a very attractive boy. His clothes were dirty and torn—and so was his face. His hat was gone, and his hair had not seen a comb for weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies and no-see-'ems had bitten him until his skin was covered with blotches and his eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly see. And worst of all, he looked as if he were dying of starvation. There was almost nothing left of him but skin and bones, and his clothing hung upon him as it would on a framework of sticks. If the Porcupine could have philosophized about it he would probably have said that this was the wrong time of year for starving; and from his point of view he would have been right. June, in the woods, is the season of plenty for everybody but man. Man thinks he must have wheat-flour, and that doesn't grow on pines or maple-trees, nor yet in the tamarack swamp. But was there any wild, fierce glare in the boy's eyes, such a light of hunger as the story-books tell us is to be seen in the eyes of the wolf and the lynx when they have not eaten for days and days, and when the snow lies deep in the forest, and famine comes stalking through the trees? I don't think so. He was too weak and miserable to do any glaring, and his stomach was aching so hard from eating green gooseberries that he could scarcely think of anything else.

But his face brightened a very little when he saw the old she-porcupine, and he picked up a heavy stick and waded out beside her log. She clacked her teeth together angrily as he approached; but he paid no attention, so she drew herself into a ball, with her head down and her nose covered by her forepaws. Reaching across her back and down on each side was a belt or girdle of quills, the largest and heaviest on her whole body, which could be erected at will, and now they stood as straight as young spruce-trees. Their tips were dark-brown, but the rest of their length was nearly white, and when you looked at her from behind she seemed to have a pointed white ruffle, edged with black, tied around the middle of her body. But the boy wasn't thinking about ruffles, and he didn't care what she did with her quills. He gave her such a thrust with his stick that she had to grab at the log with both hands to keep from being shoved into the water. That left her nose unprotected, and he brought the stick down across it once, twice, three times. Then he picked her up by one foot, very gingerly, and carried her off; and our Porky never saw his mother again.

Perhaps we had best follow her up and see what finally became of her. Half a mile from the scene of the murder the boy came upon a woman and a little girl. I sha'n't try to describe them, except to say that they were even worse off than he. Perhaps you read in the papers, some years ago, about the woman and the two children who were lost for several weeks in the woods of northern Michigan.

"I've got a porky," said the boy.



He dropped his burden on the ground, and they all stood around and looked at it. They were hungry—oh, so hungry!—but for some reason they did not seem very eager to begin. An old porcupine with her clothes on is not the most attractive of feasts, and they had no knife with which to skin her, no salt to season the meat, no fire to cook it, and no matches with which to start one. Rubbing two sticks together is a very good way of starting a fire when you are in a book, but it doesn't work very well in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp. And yet, somehow or other—I don't know how, and I don't want to—they ate that porcupine. And it did them good. When the searchers found them, a week or two later, the woman and the boy were dead, but the little girl was still alive, and for all I know she is living to this day.

Let us return to the Glimmerglass. The young Porcupine ought to have mourned deeply for his mother, but I grieve to say that he did nothing of the kind. I doubt if he was even very lonesome. His brain was smaller, smoother, and less corrugated than yours is supposed to be; its wrinkles were few and not very deep; and it may be that the bump of filial affection was quite polished, or even that there wasn't any such bump at all. Anyhow, he got along very well without her, dispensing with her much more easily than the woman and the boy and girl could have. He watched stolidly while the boy killed her and carried her off, and a little later he was eating lily-pads again.

As far as his future prospects were concerned, he had little reason for worrying. He knew pretty well how to take care of himself, for that is a kind of knowledge which comes early to young porcupines. Really, there wasn't much to learn. His quills would protect him from most of his enemies, if not from all of them; and, what was still better, he need never suffer from a scarcity of food. Of all the animals in the woods the porcupine is probably the safest from starvation, for he can eat anything from the soft green leaves of the water-plants to the bark and the small twigs of the tallest hemlock. Summer and winter, his storehouse is always full. The young lions may lack, and suffer hunger, and seek their meat from God; but the young porky has only to climb a tree and set his teeth at work. All the woods are his huckleberry.

And, by the way, our Porcupine's teeth were a great institution, especially the front ones, and were well worthy of a somewhat detailed description. They were long and sharp and yellow, and there were two in the upper jaw and two in the lower, with a wide gap on each side between them and the molars. They kept right on growing as long as he lived, and there is no telling how far they would have gone if there had been nothing to stop them. Fortunately, he did a great deal of eating and chewing, and the constant friction kept them worn down, and at the same time served to sharpen them. Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin shells of hard enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and of course the soft parts wore away first, and left the enamel projecting in sharp, chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs from a hickory axe-handle.

The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty to eat, and nothing to do but keep his jaws going. By and by the leaves began to fall, and whenever the Porky walked abroad they rustled around him like silk skirts going down the aisle of a church. A little later the beechnuts came down from the sky, and he feasted more luxuriously than ever. His four yellow chisels tore the brown shells open, his molars ground the sweet kernels into meal, and he ate and ate till his short legs could hardly keep his fat little belly off the ground.

Then came the first light snow, and his feet left tracks which bore a faint resemblance to a baby's—that is, if your imagination was sufficiently vigorous. The snow grew deeper and deeper, and after a while he had to fairly plough his way from the hollow log to the tree where he took his meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy legs were not made for wading, and at every step he had to lift and drag himself forward, and then let his body drop while he shifted his feet. A porcupine's feet will not go of themselves, the way other animals' do. They have to be picked up one at a time and lifted forward as far as they can reach—not very far at the best, for they are fastened to the ends of very short legs. It almost seems as if he could run faster if he could drop them off and leave them behind. One evening, when the snow was beginning to freeze again after a thawing day, he lay down to rest for a few minutes; and when he started on, some of his quills were fast in the hardening crust and had to be left behind. But no matter how difficult the walk might be, there was always a good square meal at the end of it, and he pushed valiantly on till he reached his dinner-table.

Sometimes he stayed in the same tree for several days at a time, quenching his thirst with snow, and sleeping in a crotch.

He was not by any means the only porcupine in the woods around the Glimmerglass, although weeks sometimes passed without his seeing any of his relations. At other times there were from one to half a dozen porkies in the trees close by, and when they happened to feel like it they would call back and forth to each other in queer, harsh, and often querulous voices.

One afternoon, when he and another porcupine were occupying trees next each other, two land-lookers came along and camped for the night between them. Earlier in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood, and, with all the skill of the voyageurs of old, cooked their scanty supper, and made their bed of balsam boughs. The half-breed was much afraid that they would have visitors before morning, but the white man only laughed at the idea.

The meal was hardly finished when they lay down between their blankets—the white man to sleep, and the half-breed to listen, listen, listen for the coming of the wolves. Beyond the camp-fire's little circle of ruddy light, vague shadows moved mysteriously, as if living things were prowling about among the trees and only waiting for him to fall asleep. Yet there was no wolf-howl to be heard, nor anything else to break the silence of the winter night, save possibly the dropping of a dead branch, or the splitting open of a tree-trunk, torn apart by the frost. And by and by, in spite of himself, the half-breed's eyelids began to droop.

But somebody else was awake—awake, and tempted with a great temptation. The porcupine—not ours, but the other one—had caught the fragrance of coffee and bacon. Here were new odors—different from anything that had ever before tickled his nostrils—strange, but indescribably delicious. He waited till the land-lookers were snoring, and then he started down the tree. Half-way to the ground he encountered the cloud of smoke that rose from the camp-fire. Here was another new odor, but with nothing pleasant about it. It stung his nostrils and made his eyes smart, and he scrambled up again as fast as he could go, his claws and quills rattling on the bark. The half-breed woke with a start. He had heard something—he was sure he had—the wolves were coming, and he gave the white man a punch in the ribs.

"Wake up, wake up, m'shoor!" he whispered, excitedly. "The wolves are coming. I can hear them on the snow."

The white man was up in a twinkling, but by that time the porcupine hod settled himself in a crotch, out of reach of the smoke, and the woods were silent again. The two listened with all their ears, but there was not a sound to be heard.

"You must have been dreaming, Louis."

The half-breed insisted that he had really heard the patter of the wolves' feet on the snow-crust, but the timber cruiser laughed at him, and lay down to sleep again. An hour later the performance was repeated, and this time the white man was angry.

"Don't you wake me up again, Louis. You're so rattled you don't know what you're doing."

Louis was silenced, but not convinced, and he did not let himself go to sleep again. The fire was dying down, and little by little the smoke-cloud grew thinner and thinner until it disappeared entirely. Then the half-breed heard the same sound once more, but from the tree overhead, and not from across the snow. He waited and watched, and presently a dark-brown animal, two or three feet in length and about the shape of an egg, came scrambling cautiously down the trunk. The porky reached the ground in safety, and searched among the tin plates and the knives and forks until he found a piece of bacon rind; but he got just one taste of it, and then Louis hit him over the head with a club. Next morning the land-lookers had porcupine soup for breakfast, and they told me afterward that it was very good indeed.

Our Porky had seen it all. He waited till the men had tramped away through the woods, with their packs on their backs and their snow-shoes on their feet, and then he, too, came down from his tree on a tour of investigation. His friend's skin lay on the snow not very far away—if you had pulled the quills and the longer hairs out of it, it would have made the pelt which the old fur-traders sometimes sold under the name of "spring beaver"—but he paid no attention to it. The bacon rind was what interested him most, and he chewed and gnawed at it with a relish that an epicure might have envied. It was the first time in all his gluttonous little life that he had ever tasted the flavor of salt or wood-smoke; and neither lily-pads, nor beechnuts, nor berries, nor anything else in all the woods could compare with it. Life was worth living, if only for this one experience; and it may be that he stowed a dim memory of it away in some dark corner of his brain, and hoped that fortune would some day be good to him and send him another rind.

The long, long winter dragged slowly on, the snow piled up higher and deeper, and the cold grew sharper and keener. Night after night the pitiless stars seemed sucking every last bit of warmth out of the old earth and leaving it dead and frozen forever. Those were the nights when the rabbits came out of their burrows and stamped up and down their runways for hours at a time, trying by exercise to keep from freezing to death, and when the deer dared not lie down to sleep. And hunger came with the cold and the deep snow. The buck and the doe had to live on hemlock twigs till they grew thin and poor. The partridges were buried in the drifting snow, and starved to death. The lynxes and the wild-cats hunted and hunted and hunted, and found no prey; and it was well for the bears and the woodchucks that they could sleep all winter and did not need food. Only the Porcupine had plenty and to spare. Starvation had no terrors for him.

But the hunger of another may mean danger for us, as the Porcupine discovered. In ordinary times most of the animals let him severely alone. They knew better than to tackle such a living pin-cushion as he; and if any of them ever did try it, one touch was generally enough. But when you are ready to perish with hunger, you will take risks which at other times you would not even think about; and so it happened that one February afternoon, as the Porky was trundling himself deliberately over the snow-crust, a fierce-looking animal with dark fur, bushy tail, and pointed nose sprang at him from behind a tree and tried to catch him by the throat, where the quills did not grow, and there was nothing but soft, warm fur. The Porcupine knew just what to do in such a case, and he promptly made himself into a prickly ball, very much as his mother had done seven or eight months before, with his face down, and his quills sticking out defiantly. But this time his scheme of defence did not work as well as usual, for the sharp little nose dug into the snow and wriggled its way closer and closer to where the jugular vein was waiting to be tapped. That fisher must have understood his business, for he had chosen the one and only way by which a porcupine may be successfully attacked. For once in his life our friend was really scared. Another inch, and the fisher would have won the game, but he was in such a hurry that he grew careless and reckless, and did not notice that he had wheeled half-way round, and that his hind-quarters were alongside the Porcupine's. Now, sluggish and slow though a porky may be, there is one of his members that is as quick as a steel trap, and that is his tail. Something hit the fisher a whack on his flank, and he gave a cry of pain and fury, and jumped back with half a dozen spears sticking in his flesh. He must have quite lost his head during the next few seconds, for before he knew it his face also had come within reach of that terrible tail and its quick, vicious jerks. That ended the battle, and he fled away across the snow, almost mad with the agony in his nose, his eyes, his forehead, and his left flank. As for the Porky, he made for the nearest tree as fast as he could go, hardly trusting in his great deliverance. And I don't believe there is any sight in all the Great Tahquamenon Swamp much funnier than a porky in a hurry—a porky who has really made up his mind that he is in danger and must hustle for dear life. He is the very personification of haste and a desire to go somewhere quick, and he picks his feet up and puts them down again as fast as ever he can; and yet, no matter how hard he works, his legs are so short and his body so fat that he can't begin to travel as fast as he wants to.

Another day the lynx tried it, and fared even worse than the fisher—not the Canada lynx, with whom we are already somewhat acquainted, but the bay lynx. The fisher had had some sense, and would probably have succeeded if he had been a little more careful, but the lynx was a fool. He didn't know the very first thing about the proper way to hunt porcupines, and he ought never to have tried it at all, but he was literally starving, and the temptation was too much for him. Here was something alive, something that had warm red blood in its veins and a good thick layer of flesh over its bones, and that was too slow to get away from him; and he sailed right in, tooth and claw, regardless of the consequences. Immediately he forgot all about the Porcupine, and his own hunger, and everything else but the terrible pain in his face and his forepaws. He made the woods fairly ring with his howls, and he jumped up and down on the snow-crust, rubbing his head with his paws, and driving the little barbed spears deeper and deeper into the flesh. And then, all of a sudden, he ceased his leaping and bounding and howling, and dropped on the snow in a limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's lily-pads. One of the quills had driven straight through his left eye and into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine came to think himself invulnerable?