nd the foe
sprang at his throat. He was not there when the enemy's teeth closed,
but his fangs were, and fang closed on fang, and the resulting tussle
was not pretty to behold.

Mesomelas cleared himself from that scrunch with very red lips, but
never stopped his whirling, light-cavalry form of attack. He was
trying to tease the other into dashing after him, and giving up the
advantage which his foe had in size and strength, but it was no good;
and finally Adustus suddenly scurried into cover, redder than he had
been, and our black-back, too, had to bolt for his hole, as an
aardwolf, clumsy, hyena-like, and cowardly, but strong enough for them,
scenting blood, came up to investigate.

Mercifully, the side-stripe seemed to attract the more attention, or
shed the more blood, and while the aardwolf was sniffing at his
hole--not intending to do anything if the jackal had a snap left in
him, which he had, for the aardwolf possessed the heart of a sheep,
really--the black-back managed to dash out and abscond to his hole with
the hare. When the aardwolf came back, and sniffed out what he had
done, he said things.

Our jackal's head appeared at his hole next dawn as a francolin began
to call, and a gray lowrie--a mere shadow up among the
branches--started to call out, "Go away! go away!" as if he were
speaking to the retreating night. A gay, orange-colored bat came and
hung up above the jackal's den--well out of reach, of course--and a
ground-hornbill suddenly started his reverberating "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"
and, behold--'twas dawn!

The jackal scuttled down to the river to have a drink, which he got
rather riskily among the horns of drinking, congregated hartebeests,
impala, and other antelope, and returned with the leg-bone of a
bush-buck, which had been slain the night before by a leopard, and he
went to ground very quickly, for the great spotted cat could be heard,
grunting wrath, at his heels.

Then the day strode up, and the light, creeping in, showed our jackal,
curled up and fast asleep, in his lair, as far away as he could
possibly get in the space--two ant-bears', or aardvarks', holes run
into one--from his also curled-up wife.

Later--for it was quite chilly--he came out to sleep in the sun, under
a bush, till the sun, in turn, half-baked him, and he retired again to
the den.

The days were, as a rule, for the jackal, a succession of sleeping
blanks, but at the end of this day it was the fate of a small
py