ving--that polecat did
then. And yet, stare as one would upon the absolutely bare grass,
dotted only here and there with a stone, or a rat's skull, or a
daisy--all looking alike in their whiteness from a distance--not a
living, breathing thing was to be seen.

And yet there was a living, breathing thing there. Indeed, there were
several. It was only the eye that was deceived, not the nose--at
least, not the polecat's nose--by motionlessness.

Right in front of the polecat, within spring, still as the very ground,
the huffish, whitish check of a peewit, lap-wing, or green plover would
have been mistaken for one of the many stones; the thin, curving
top-knot for a stem of the thin, harsh grass: the low curve of the dark
back, with its light reflections in green, for no more than the natural
curve of the close-cropped turf. And she was on her nest, which was no
nest, but a scrape, backing her natural assimilation with her
surroundings to see her through.

And the polecat knew she was there, and he knew she was on her
nest--she would not have been fool enough to keep there otherwise. His
nose told him--not his eyes, I think, for that was nearly impossible.
The thing was, he wanted her to move. That was what he was waiting
for. No more than the twitch of an eyelid would do to show which end
was head and which tail; for he could only smell her, and, in a manner,
would have to pounce blind if she did not move.

She did not move, however, and in the end he had to pounce blind,
anyhow, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, when it did come, shifting like a
streak, that there seemed to have been no time to shout even, or gasp.

Yet that peewit found time in that fraction of a second to rise, open
her wings, and get two feet into the air. And then the polecat took
her, leaping with unexpected agility, and pulling her down out of
limitless freedom and safety. There was just a rush, a snap, a
wild-bird squawk, and down the pair went, to the accompaniment of
furiously fluttering wings and in a cloud of feathers.

She had made a slight mistake in her calculations, that peewit, a
matter of perhaps a quarter of a second, but enough. Nature has not
got much room for those who commit slight mistakes in the wild, I
guess; they mostly quit the stage before passing that habit on, or soon
after.

For a moment there was a horrible, strenuous jumble of fur and feathers
on the ground, and then the polecat's flat head rose up on his lon