things,
however, must be; and they would not happen if it were not for a hard,
though very sound, purpose, among beasts as among men. Nature is
far-seeing and very wise. Moreover, she hates hypocrisy, and--well, we
may not all be butchers, but most of us eat meat.

It was certainly a very great confloption, for, of course, that wild cat
fought like a--like a wild cat, which is like a Welshman, and I cannot
say more than that. And in the end the whole inferno, being upon a very
sharp slope, began to slide, and slid, dragging a welter of dust and raw
earth and feathers and fur after it, in an avalanche of its own, till it
fetched up in a tangle of mountain-ash roots and furze two hundred feet
below, where it furiously and fearfully, in one wild, awful, whirling
flurry, ended.

After that the Chieftain dragged what was left of that wild cat out of
the bushes, where he had tried to jamb and crawl and burrow himself, out
into the open--well into the open--so that the eagles could look all
round, which they like to do, being birds of high degree--also vermin, or
counted as such by gamekeepers of low degree.

The pair--Heaven and the laird alone know how long they had been good and
faithful partners in life--thereupon set to hooking at one another with
their horny, dragon-like beaks, gripping with black-taloned yellow claws
that even a Hercules would shake hands with just once, beating with
monster wings that would knock you or me silly, snapping horny,
resounding snaps, and generally "not 'arf a-carryin' on" in the approved
and correct modern matrimonial manner. So it appeared, at least; but
among eagles--within the royal circle, that is to say--such things might
be their way of paying compliments, for you cannot expect feathered
couples of the royal blood to behave like a pair of mere love-birds.

Then came the bullet.

It was a neat, long, nickel-jacketed, lead-nosed bullet of some
.300-caliber, and its own report was chasing it. It sang a high-pitched,
plaintive little song all alone to itself as it traveled along through
the fine, champagne-like mountain air, at about thirteen hundred feet per
second, and it was aimed to hit the Chieftain exactly in the full of the
chest. That was why, I suppose, it hit the wild cat smack in the
backbone, and killed that poor beast all over again. But you can never
tell with bullets.

It might be mentioned here that just as turtle-soup is to their worships,
so is wild cat t