ar that the needle was pointing
south-southeast; and to-night, in spite of his certain knowledge that
the voice he heard was that of a lynx or a wild-cat or cougar, he
couldn't help being almost dead sure that it came from a woman in
distress, there was in it such a note of human anguish and despair.
Twice he got half-way out of bed to go to her assistance, and then lay
down again and called himself a fool. At last he could stand it no
longer, and taking a burning brand from the broken stove that stood in
the centre of the room, he went to the door and looked out. The great
arc-light of the moon had checkered the snow-crust with inky shadows,
and patches of dazzling white. The cold air struck him like needles, and
he said to himself that it was no wonder that either a cat or a woman
should cry if she had to stay out in the snow on such a night. The
moaning and wailing ceased as he opened the door, but now two round
spots of flame shone out of a black shadow and stared at him
unwinkingly. The lynx's pupils were wide open, and the golden-yellow
tapeta in the backs of her eyeballs were glowing like incandescent
lamps. It was no woman. No human eyes could ever shine like that. The
land-looker threw the brand with all his might; an ugly snarl came from
the shadow, and he saw a big gray animal go tearing away across the
hard, smooth crust in a curious kind of gallop, taking three or four
yards at a bound, coming down on all four feet at once, and spring
forward again as if she was made of rubber. He shut the door and went
back to bed.

That was the end of the concert, and, as it turned out, it was also the
end of the lynx's troubles, at least for the time being. Half an hour
later, as she was loping along in the moonlight, she thought she heard a
faint sound from beneath her feet. She stood still to listen, and the
next minute she was sure. During the last heavy snow-storm three
partridges had dived into a drift for shelter from the wind and the
cold, and such a thick, hard crust had formed over their heads that they
had not been able to get out again. She resurrected them in short order
and reinterred them after a fashion of her own, and then she went home
to her hollow tree and slept the sleep of those who have done what
Nature tells them to, and whose consciences are clear and whose stomachs
full.

That was her nearest approach to starvation. She never was quite so
hungry again, and in the early spring she had a great pi