oke," when they got suddenly rich, seem to go
temporarily mad with the lust of spending, and so it was with her; only,
her madness was the lust of killing.

She killed, leaping and wrenching at the poor, screaming birds' throats,
blinded to the world with excitement, drunk with blood. That is an awful
intoxication, and makes even men, let alone wild, carnivorous beasts, do
unmentionable things. Also, the smell of blood was too much for the male
genet, and he presently rushed, with flying tail, into the crimson orgy
too.

They were some time at this craziness; and when they had finished, they
and the fowls that were still alive could only lie and pant together
among the contorted slain, the blood--you would never believe how a
cockerel will bleed--and the carmine-tinted feathers. You might not
believe me if I told you how many fowls they had killed, but it was a
most disgraceful number, and quite inexcusable.

And then, even as they lay there, dead-beat, they started suddenly and
together, for, almost like a blow, the fact dawned upon them that it was
day. Night had stolen away, and dawn discovered them at the killing; and
goodness alone knows how long they had been at it--ten minutes or hours.
Anyway, here it was, and they leapt to their feet together.

As they hurried out they had to pass the place where the carcass of the
owl _had been_! It was gone--mysteriously sauntered as a corpse into
nowhere. Owls are uncanny creatures at any time, but moving about when
dead is not usually a recognized habit of theirs. The genets sniffed
anxiously, and ran the trail to the hole under the roof, since it
happened to be on their way. Through the hole it went, and into the
air--literally into the air. In other words, that owl had simply
"bluffed" death when she realized that she was near death. The bluff had
come off; and at a later, and what she judged a proper, time, she had
just, and of course silently, flown off by the way she had come; and--as
I live!--a fowl had gone with her.

One minute later an unsuspected martial hawk-eagle precipitated himself
out of a big, hoary, old fig-tree, a hundred yards away from the
fowlhouse, on to one of the genets' disappearing tails. This is the
world's most general view of a genet, by the way--its disappearing tail;
and it is given to very few to see the beautiful, dark-blotched, creamy,
little, lithe, long beast that the ringed tail belongs to. Of course,
the eagle was too l