know everything call the lynx kitten. The Little Sly One is good
enough for us to call her, for she is even slyer when she is a she than
when he is a he. Is that quite clear?"

"Of _course_!" exclaimed the Babe.

"Well, the Little Sly One was a lonely orphan. She had had a mother
and a sister and two brothers; but a man with a dog and a gun had
happened on the mouth of the cave in which they lived. The dog had
hastily gone in. There was a terrible noise in the cave all of a
sudden, and the dog would have hastily come out again, but for the fact
that he was no longer able to come or go anywhere. When the noise had
stopped so that he could see in, the man had shot the mother lynx.
Then he had shot the dog, because that was the only thing to do. And
because he was very sorry and angry about the dog, he also shot the
lynx kittens, where they crowded, spitting savagely, at the back of the
cave. But there were only three of them at the back of the cave. The
Little Sly One, instead of bothering to spit when there were other
things more important to be done, had run up the wall and hidden in a
crevice, so still she didn't even let her tail twitch. Of course, like
all her family, she didn't really have a tail, but merely a little
blunt stub, perhaps two inches long. But that stub could have
twitched, and wanted desperately to twitch, only she would not let it.
She always seemed to think she had a tail, and, if she had had, it
would have stuck out so the man could have seen it, the crevice being
such a very small one. You see how _sly_ she was!

"Of course, the Little Sly One was lonely for the next few days, but
she was kept so busy hunting breakfasts, and lunches, and dinners, and
suppers that she hadn't time to fret much. She was something like a
three-quarters-grown kitten now, except for her having no tail to speak
of, and curious, fierce-looking tufts to her ears, and pale eyes so
savage and bright that they seemed as if they could look through a log
even if it wasn't hollow.

"Also, her feet were twice as big as a kitten's would have been, and
her hindquarters were high and powerful, like a rabbit's. Her soft,
bright fur was striped like a tiger's--though by the time she was grown
up it would have changed to a light, shadowy, brownish gray, hard to
detect in the dim thickets.

"The Little Sly One was so sly and so small that she had no difficulty
in creeping up on birds and woodmice, to say nothing of g