re-feet straight, and
stopped as quickly as ever he could. Then he snarled, and full right
had he to snarl.

The hare was lying on her back, weakly kicking out the last of her life
with her hindlegs, and a stocky, short-nosed, evil, leering,
side-striped jackal was standing over her. _He_ had done the deed.
And our black-back knew that side-stripe, had met him before. The two
families lived only a few hundred yards apart, and it was Mrs.
Side-stripe who was responsible for our friend's wife's crippled
condition at that moment. This was a typical side-striper, one of the
creeping, hunting-by-surprise-and-pounce sort, and it may be that he
had never run down any prey worth speaking about in his life. In a
way, he was the very opposite from our black-back, who was mostly legs,
and a bit of a sportsman, and, I believe, really delighted in a good
ringing hunt. Wherefore there was not much cause for surprise at the
bitter blood-feud that had gradually grown up between them, till now
things had come pretty well to a head.

The other beast folded back his lean upper-lip till his teeth
glistened, and grinned at him--a menacing grin. I don't know if he
guessed that it was, by all the laws of the chase, the black-back's
hare, but he knew that he had pounced upon her as she passed--pounced
like a cat, as was his way, what time he was profiting by his enemy's
absence to keep that enemy's lame wife indoors, and from hunting even
for insects or fruit, by prowling round her lair, and threatening her
with growls. Perhaps he had designs upon her puppies. Perhaps his
wife had. And perhaps Mrs. Mesomelas knew that. It is difficult to
tell.

There was a sort of a blackish-tawny line drawn to the
side-stripe--whose other and learned name was Adustus--and back. It
scarcely seemed possible that the black-backed little chap had moved,
but he had--leaped in and out again, chopping wickedly with a
sword-like gleam of fangs as he did so. The other pivoted, quick as
thought, and counter-slashed, and, before you could wink, Mesomelas was
in and away, in and out, once, twice, and again. One bite sent a
little flick of the other's brown fur a-flying; one missed, one got
home, and the side-stripe's ugly snarling changed to a yap to say so.

Twice the two beasts whirled round and round, like roulette-balls, the
black-back always on the outside, always doing the attacking, dancing
as if on air, light as a gnat. Once he got right in, a