ered in
complacent admiration of himself. But hunger such as he had never felt
before rose superior to his aesthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter
in ravenous haste.

He had not far to go--a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.

They were in a patch of sunlight, lazily browsing on the starwort, mild
as any sheep, with foolish, staring eyes, gaping suckers, and bodies that
gleamed as if sprinkled with gold dust. For three days he settled in their
neighbourhood, growing each day sleeker and more gorgeous. His orange
waistcoat took a warmer hue, the crimson deepened on his tail and tipped
the summits of his festooned crest. In six days' time he was a very
perfect newt, decked and caparisoned for love or war. The very
sticklebacks fought shy of him. One, it is true, charged him with spines
erect--he had a nest to guard and would have charged a pike--but even he,
for all his burnished panoply of emerald and vermilion, shrank back and
bristled defiance from a safe distance. As for the shoal, they scattered
in flashing rainbow-tinted disarray at his approach.

He was master of his surroundings, but there came a time when tadpoles
palled upon him. For one thing, they were becoming daily more bony. Those
with hind legs developed were difficult to swallow; those with front legs
also were hopeless. A change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for
this, he came into collision with the water-spider.

[Illustration: HE BRISTLED DEFIANCE FROM A SAFE DISTANCE.]

Now, the water-spider lived by himself in a bubble of his own making. His
legs were stout and long and hairy, his countenance was horrible, and his
bite a thing to be avoided. When the newt first saw him he was devouring a
caddis-worm. Vanity had been the worm's undoing. Instead of casing itself
with tiny sticks and pebbles and sojourning at the bottom, as Nature
ordained, it had put on a gaudy livery of starwort leaves. Trusting
to this elegant protective mimicry, it boldly sought the surface. The
disguise availed it nothing. The spider drove its fangs through the flimsy
covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The
bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider's leap from its
bubble, the glint of its shears as they met in the wretched creature's
neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce
eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning
that seemed intelligent of Na