ough grey coats, and grunted with satisfaction at
the feeling of health and strength which nearly all wild animals delight
occasionally to express.

The forest trees had donned their verdure; the tall bracken had lifted
its fronds so far above the grass that the mother rabbit no longer found
them a convenient screen through which to peer at the strange antics of
the old badgers as they came from their lair and sat in the twilight on
the mound by the entrance of their home; and the rill in the dingle,
which, during winter and early spring, leaped, a clear, rushing torrent,
on its way to the river below the steep, had dwindled to a few drops of
water, collected in tiny pools among the stones, or trickling
reluctantly down the dank, green water-weed. The young badger family
had grown so strong and high-spirited that their dam, weakened by
motherhood, and at a loss to restrain their increasing desire for
outdoor air and exercise, determined to wean them, and to teach them
many lessons, concerning the ways of the woodland people, which she had
learned long ago from her parents, or, more recently, from her own
experiences as a creature of the dark, mysterious night.

Brock, in particular, was the source of considerable anxiety to her. He
was the leader in every scene of noisy festivity; she was repeatedly
forced to punish him for following her at dusk to the mound outside the
upper gallery, and for disobedience when she condescended to take part
in a midnight romp in the underground nursery. He tormented the other
members of the family by awakening them from sleep when he desired to
play, also by appropriating, till his appetite was fully appeased, all
the food his dam brought home from her hunting expeditions, and, again,
by picking quarrels over such a trifling matter as the choice of a place
when he and his little companions wished to rest.

Nature's children are wilful and selfish; and in their struggle for
existence they live, if independent of their parents, only so long as
they can take care of themselves. Among adult animals, however,
selfishness seems to become inoperative in the care they take of their
offspring. But though the mother badger was unselfish towards her little
ones, she spared no effort to instruct them in the ways of selfishness.

The night of Brock's first visit to the woods was warm and unclouded.
For an hour after sunset, he played about the gallery by the door, while
his mother, a vigilant sent