boring a hole in the wind, and behind him
two boys, coming strong, but not in his class for speed. Our quarry
gained one block in three. We just rounded a barn in time to see him
jump into a wood shed behind a real estate office.

I knew a cat with kittens lived in that wood shed, and strained myself
to reach there before the fun was over. However, there was ample time.
The code of the animal duel is as formal and long-winded as anything
the mind of man has devised. Probably everyone has seen two young
cockerels, standing with their bills together, apparently lost in a
Buddhistic reverie, suddenly broken by violence. They are only an
illustration. All animals have their ceremonial of battle, when it is
for the fun of fighting, pure and simple, with the dinner question
eliminated.

The weird war song of Mrs. Cat, pealing out from the cracks of the wood
shed, assured us we would be repaid for our trouble, but the tone
indicated that the fell moment had not arrived. We peered through a
chink. The cat was in a corner, her family around her. Her eyes
roamed all over the wood shed, merely taking the bear in _en passant_.
She seemed unconscious of the awful noise which ripped the air.

The bear, for his part, was unaware of the proximity of a yowling cat.
He never so much as glanced in her direction, having found a very
diverting chunk of coal, which he batted about the floor. A singular
thing was that, when the coal moved it always moved nearer the cat.

The cat prepared for trouble, after the manner of her kind, and the
bear prepared to cause it, after the manner of his kind. Occasionally,
when a blood-curdling screech from his antagonist rang upon his
eardrums, the cub would stop a moment and gaze pensively through and
beyond the end of the wood shed, as if, indeed, from far off, a certain
sound, made filmy and infinitesimal by distance, had reached him. Then
he would smile deprecatingly to himself, as if to say, "How easily I am
deceived!"

Excellent as was the feigned indifference of Mr. Bear, it must be borne
in mind that he was opposed to an animal of parts. Our friend, the
cat, was not a whit taken in by the comedy. When the time came for her
to leap she was ready, to the last hair of her chimney-cleaner tail.
She had been making most elaborate preparations all the while,
stretching and retracting her claws, squirming her whalebone body
flatter and flatter, her tail assuming majestic proportions, wh