tack. She
struck it once on the nose, but the Porcupine doubled his head under,
his tail flew up, and the mother Lynx was speared in a dozen places
with the little stinging javelins. She drew them all with her teeth,
for she had "learned Porcupine" years before, and only the hard push of
want would have made her strike one now.

A Frog was all she caught that day. On the next, as she ranged the
farthest woods in a long, hard hunt, she heard a singular calling
voice. It was new to her. She approached it cautiously, up wind, got
many new odors and some more strange sounds in coming. The loud, clear,
rolling call was repeated as the mother Lynx came to an opening in the
forest. In the middle of it were two enormous muskrat or beaver-houses,
far bigger than the biggest she ever before had seen. They were made
partly of logs and situated, not in a pond, but on a dry knoll. Walking
about them were a number of Partridges, that is, birds like Partridges,
only larger and of various colors, red, yellow, and white.

She quivered with the excitement that in a man would have been called
buck-fever. Food--food--abundance of food, and the old huntress sank to
earth. Her breast was on the ground, her elbows above her back, as she
made stalk, her shrewdest, subtlest stalk; one of those Partridges she
must have at any price; no trick now must go untried, no error in this
hunt; if it took hours--all day--she must approach with certainty to
win before the quarry took to flight.

Only a few bounds it was from wood shelter to the great rat-house, but
she was an hour in crawling that small space. From stump to brush, from
log to bunch of grass she sneaked, a flattened form, and the Partridges
saw her not. They fed about, the biggest uttering the ringing call that
first had fallen on her ear.

Once they seemed to sense their peril, but a long await dispelled the
fear. Now they were almost in reach, and she trembled with all the
eagerness of the hunting heart and the hungry maw. Her eye centred on a
white one not quite the nearest, but the color seemed to hold her gaze.

There was an open space around the rat-house; outside that were tall
weeds, and stumps were scattered everywhere. The white bird wandered
behind these weeds, the red one of the loud voice flew to the top of
the rat-mound and sang as before. The mother Lynx sank lower yet. It
seemed an alarm note; but no, the white one still was there; she could
see its feathers gleaming th