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 deed was wholly kind.

* * * * *

The wind blew down the valley from the north. The snow-horses went
racing over the wrinkled ice, over the Don Flats, and over the marsh
toward the lake, white, for they were driven snow, but on them,
scattered dark, were riding plumy fragments of partridge ruffs--the
famous rainbow ruffs. And they rode on the wind that night, away, away
to the south, over the dark lake, as they rode in the gloom of his Mad
Moon flight, riding and riding on till they were engulfed, the last
trace of the last of the Don Valley race.

For no partridge is heard in Castle Frank now--and in Mud Creek Ravine
the old pine drum-log, unused, has rotted in silence away.

RAGGYLUG

THE STORY OF A COTTONTAIL RABBIT

Raggylug, or Rag, was the name of a young cottontail rabbit. It was
given him from his torn and ragged ear, a life-mark that he got in his
first adventure. He lived with his mother in Olifant's swamp, where I
made their acquaintance and gathered, in a hundred different ways, the
little bits of proof and scraps of truth that at length enabled me to
write this history.

Those who do not know the animals well may think I have humanized them,
but those who have lived so near them as to know somewhat of their ways
and their minds will not think so.

Truly rabbits have no