salt the
young stock kept in it, the real offender was not discovered, although
it was apparent to the farmer that the heifer had been attacked by some
wild beast. The rains, however, had so obliterated the signs that it
is doubtful if he could have read them rightly, even had he discovered
the scene of the battle.

About a week later Black Bruin was climbing the mountainside on the way
to his fastness when the wind brought him a new scent that he had
sometimes smelled before, but what to attribute it to he had never
known. The scent was very strong and Black Bruin knew that the
intruder of his domain was near at hand. At last he made out a dim
gray shape, near the trunk of a tree. Its color so blended with its
surroundings that he might not have noticed it at all, had it not been
for two yellow phosphorus eyes that glowed full at him.

The creature was about the size of a large raccoon, but it was no
raccoon. Its head was large and round, and surmounted by long ears
with hairy tassels at the end. Its forearm was longer and stronger
than that of a raccoon and the tail was short and not much of an
ornament.

Whatever the animal was, it was small and possibly good to eat, so
Black Bruin made a rush at it; but quick as he was, he was not half as
quick as the lynx, which with a snarl and a spit scratched up the tree
in a manner that made the bear's own accomplishments at tree-climbing
look mean indeed. So the stranger could climb trees? Well, so could
Black Bruin. Up he scratched after it. He would follow it to the top
and then bat it off with his paw.

When the cat had nearly reached the top of the tree, it turned around
and looked back. Its enemy was close upon it and something heroic must
be done.

The cat measured the distance to a tree-top forty or fifty feet farther
down the mountainside; then the top of the tree in which it squatted
sprang back and the gray form shot through the air and alighted
gracefully in the distant tree-top.

It was a great jump, and so astonished Black Bruin that he forgot to be
furious at seeing his game escape.

This was his first experience with a Canadian lynx, but he saw them
often, once he had learned their ways. He discovered that they too
were fishermen, and hunters of small game. He often found them hunting
upon his preserves, but their broad paws fell so lightly upon the
forest carpet and their gray forms were so unobtrusive in the woods
that he did not often c