and quivering nostrils until he was only
eighteen or twenty inches from the loon's smooth white breast. When
the beautiful bird, apparently as peaceful and inoffensive as a
flower, saw that his hairy yellow enemy had arrived at the right
distance, the loon, who evidently was a fine judge of the reach of his
spear, shot it forward quick as a lightning-flash, in marvelous
contrast to the wonderful slowness of the preparatory poising,
backward motion. The aim was true to a hair-breadth. Tom was struck
right in the centre of his forehead, between the eyes. I thought his
skull was cracked. Perhaps it was. The sudden astonishment of that
outraged cat, the virtuous indignation and wrath, terror, and pain,
are far beyond description. His eyes and screams and desperate retreat
told all that. When the blow was received, he made a noise that I
never heard a cat make before or since; an awfully deep, condensed,
screechy, explosive _Wuck!_ as he bounced straight up in the air like
a bucking bronco; and when he alighted after his spring, he rushed
madly across the room and made frantic efforts to climb up the
hard-finished plaster wall. Not satisfied to get the width of the
kitchen away from his mysterious enemy, for the first time that cold
winter he tried to get out of the house, anyhow, anywhere out of that
loon-infested room. When he finally ventured to look back and saw that
the barbarous bird was still there, tranquil and motionless in front
of the stove, he regained command of some of his shattered senses and
carefully commenced to examine his wound. Backed against the wall in
the farthest corner, and keeping his eye on the outrageous bird, he
tenderly touched and washed the sore spot, wetting his paw with his
tongue, pausing now and then as his courage increased to glare and
stare and growl at his enemy with looks and tones wonderfully human,
as if saying: "You confounded fishy, unfair rascal! What did you do
that for? What had I done to you? Faithless, legless, long-nosed
wretch!" Intense experiences like the above bring out the humanity
that is in all animals. One touch of nature, even a cat-and-loon
touch, makes all the world kin.

It was a great memorable day when the first flock of passenger pigeons
came to our farm, calling to mind the story we had read about them
when we were at school in Scotland. Of all God's feathered people that
sailed the Wisconsin sky, no other bird seemed to us so wonderful. The
beautiful wande