hem.

One of the important lessons that Yan learned was this. In the woods
_the silent watcher sees the most_. The great difficulty in
watching was how to pass the time, and the solution was to sit and
_sketch._ Reading would have done had books been at hand, but
not so well as sketching, because then the eyes are fixed on the book
instead of the woods, and the turning of the white pages is apt to
alarm the shy woodfolk.

Thus Yan put in many hours making drawings of things about the edge of
the pond.

[Illustration: Kingfisher]

As he sat one day in stillness a Minnow leaped from the water and
caught a Fly. Almost immediately a Kingfisher that had been shooting
past stopped in air, hovered, and darting downward, came up with a
Minnow in his beak, flew to a branch to swallow its prey, but no
sooner got there when a Chicken-hawk flashed out of a thick tree,
struck the Kingfisher with both feet and bore him downward to the
bank--in a moment would have killed him, but a long, brown creature
rushed from a hole in the bank and sprang on the struggling pair, to
change the scene in a twinkling. The three stragglers separated, the
Hawk to the left, the Kingfisher to the right, the Minnow flopped back
into the pool, and the Mink was left on the shore with a mouthful of
feathers and looking very foolish. As it stood shaking the down from
its nose another animal came gliding down through the shrubbery to the
shore--the old gray Cat. The Mink wrinkled up his nose, showed two
rows of sharp teeth and snarled in a furious manner, but backed off
under a lot of roots. The Cat laid down her ears; the fur on her back
and tail stood up; she crouched a little, her eyes blazing and the end
of her tail twitching, and she answered the snarling of the Mink with
a low growl. The Mink was evidently threatening "sudden death" to the
Cat, and Pussy evidently was not much impressed. The Mink retreated
farther under the roots till nothing but the green glowing of his eyes
was to be seen, and the Cat, coming forward, walked calmly by his
hiding-place and went about her business. The snarling under the root
died away, and as soon as his enemy was gone the Mink dived into the
water and was lost to view.

These two animals had a second meeting, as Yan had the luck to witness
from his watching-place. He had heard the "plop" of a deft plunge, and
looked in time only to see the spreading rings near the shore. Then
the water was ruffled far up in the