n air set the live blood
leaping and dancing, and they frisked and frolicked, and romped and
played, and rolled each other over and over in the snow, and were as
wildly and deliciously happy as it is ever given to two animals to be.

It was too good to last long without some kind of an interruption, and
one glorious winter evening, when the full moon was flooding the woods
with the white light that brings a touch of madness, a third young lynx
came upon the scene. And then there was trouble. The Kitten's new friend
sat back in the bushes and looked on, while he and his rival squatted
face to face in the snow and sassed each other to the utmost limits of
the lynx vocabulary, their voices rising and falling in a hideous duet,
and their eyes gleaming and glowing with a pale, yellow-green fire.
Presently there was a rush, and the fur began to fly. The snow flew,
too; and the woods rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling,
and spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits heard
it, and trembled; and the partridges, down in the cedar swamp, glanced
furtively over their shoulders and were glad it was no nearer. They bit
and scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker in the
bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over the strenuous way in which
they strove for her favors. First one was on top, and then the other.
Now our Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail. One
minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it
seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off
just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's
throats more savagely than ever. It was really more difficult than you
would suppose for either of them to get a good hold of the other, partly
because their fur was so thick, and partly because Nature had purposely
made their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances as
this. But they managed to do a good deal of damage, nevertheless; and in
the end the pretender was thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace
down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while
the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who was at the bottom
of all this unpleasantness. His ears were slit; one eye was shut, and
the lid of the other hung very low; he limped badly with his right
hind-leg, and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast and
sides. But he didn't care. He had