in front of her, made a running noose out
of one of the buckskin thongs. Next we bent down a sapling and tied the
noose to it, and last of all we bound the free part of the thong round a
snag and thus held the sapling down. The idea is that a rabbit, bounding
along, presumably with his eyes shut, will stick his head through the
noose, kick the line clear of the snag and be drawn violently into the
air. Tish figured that by putting up half a dozen snares we'd have
three or four rabbits at least each day.

It was about three when we finished, and we drew off to a safe distance
to watch the rabbit bound to his doom. But no rabbits came along.

I was very empty and rather faint, but Tish said she had never been able
to think so clearly, and that we were all overfed and stodgy and would
be better for fasting.

Aggie came in at three-thirty with a hornet sting and no water. She said
there were no springs, but that she had found a place where a spring had
existed before the dry spell, and there was a naked footprint in the
mud, quite fresh! We all went to look at it, and Tish was quite positive
it was not a man's footprint at all, but only a bear's.

"A bear!" said Aggie.

"What of it?" Tish demanded. "The 'Young Woodsman' says that no bear
attacks a human unless he is hungry, and at this time of the year with
the woods full of food--"

"Humph!"--I could not restrain myself--"I wish you would show me a
little of it. If no rabbit with acute melancholia comes along to commit
suicide by hanging on that gallows of yours, I think we'll starve to
death."

"There will be a rabbit," Tish said tersely; and we started back to the
snare.

I was never so astonished in my life. There was a rabbit! It seems we
had struck a runway without knowing it, although Tish said afterward
that she had recognized it at once from the rabbit tracks. Anyhow,
whether it died of design or curiosity, our supper was kicking at the
top of the sapling, and Tish pretended to be calm and to have known all
along that we'd get one. But it was not dead.

We got it down somehow or other and I held it by the ears while it
kicked and scratched. I was hungry enough to have eaten it alive, but
Aggie began to cry.

"You'll be murderers, nothing else," she wailed. "Look at his little
white tail and pitiful baby eyes!"

"Good gracious, Aggie," Tish snapped, "get a knife and cut its throat
while I make a fire. If it's any help to you, we're not going to eat
ei