matter, and
a sweet, childish voice exclaimed: "There's another in the trap, Daddy!"

Neither the rabbits nor the squirrel understood this strange language;
but all realized they were in the power of dreadful Man and gave
themselves up for lost.

Fuzzy made a dash the moment the box was raised; but the trapper knew
the tricks of rabbits, so the prisoner only dashed into the same net
where her mother and Chatter Chuk were confined.

"Three of them! Two rabbits and a squirrel. That's quite a haul,
Charlie," said the man.

[Illustration: "'WHERE IS MY CHILD?'"]

The little boy was examining the box.

"Do rabbits gnaw through wood, Father?" he asked.

"No, my son," was the reply.

"But there is a hole here. And see! There are the splinters upon the
ground."

The man examined the box in turn, somewhat curiously.

"How strange!" he said. "These are marks of the squirrel's teeth. Now, I
wonder if the squirrel was trying to liberate the rabbit."

"Looks like it, Daddy; doesn't it?" replied the boy.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life," declared the man. "These
little creatures often display more wisdom than we give them credit for.
But how can we explain this curious freak, Charlie?"

The boy sat down upon the box and looked thoughtfully at the three
prisoners in the net. They had ceased to struggle, having given way to
despair; but the boy could see their little hearts beating fast through
their furry skins.

"This is the way it looks to me, Daddy," he finally said. "We caught the
small rabbit in the box, and the big one must be its mother. When she
found her baby was caught, she tried to save it, and she began to burrow
under the box, for here is the mark of her paws. But she soon saw the
flat stone, and gave up."

"Yes; that seems reasonable," said the man.

"But she loved her baby," continued the boy, gazing at the little
creatures pitifully, "and thought of another way. The red squirrel was a
friend of hers, so she ran and found him, and asked him to help her. He
did, and tried to gnaw through the box; but we came too soon and
captured them with the net because they were so busy they didn't notice
us."

"Exactly!" cried the man, with a laugh. "That tells the story very
plainly, my son, and I see you are fast learning the ways of animals.
But how intelligent these little things are!"

"That's what _my_ mother would do," returned the boy. "She'd try to save
me; and that's just what the mother