rasshoppers,
beetles and crickets. But one day she learned, to her great annoyance,
that she was not the only thing in the woods that could do this
creeping up. She had been watching a long time at the door of a
woodmouse burrow, under a tree, when suddenly she seemed to feel danger
behind her. Without waiting to look round, being so sly, she shot into
the air and landed on the trunk of a tree. As she madly clawed up it,
the jaws of a leaping fox came together with a snap just about three
inches behind her, just, in fact, where an ordinary tail would have
been. So, you see, her tail really saved her life, just by her not
having any!

"Well, when she was safely up the tree, of course she couldn't help
spitting and growling down at the hungry fox for a minute or two, while
he looked up at her with his mouth watering. Then, however, she curled
herself up in a crotch and pretended to go to sleep. And then the fox
went away, because he didn't know when she would wake up, and he didn't
want to wait! You see how sly she was!

"But once it happened she was not so sly as she might have been. You
see, after all, in spite of her fierce eyes, she was still only a
_kitten_ of a lynx; and she _had_ to _play_ once in a while. At such
times she would pounce on a leaf as if it were a mouse, or just tumble
all over herself pretending she had a real tail and was trying to catch
it. So, of course, when she happened to pass under a low, bushy branch
and caught sight of a slim, smooth, black tip of a tail, no bigger than
your little finger, hanging down from it, she naturally couldn't resist
the temptation. She pranced up on her hind legs and _clawed_ that
black tip of a tail--clawed it hard!

"The next instant, before she could prance away again, the _other_ end
of that slim, black tip swung out of the branch and whipped itself
round and round her body, and a black head, with sharp fangs in it, hit
her _biff, biff, biff_! on the nose. It was the tail of a black snake
she had tried to play with."

"Gee! But she wasn't sly that time!" exclaimed the Babe, shaking his
head wisely.

"The black snake wasn't poisonous, of course," continued Uncle Andy,
"but his fangs hurt the Little Sly One's nose, I can tell you. But the
worst of it was, how he could squeeze! Those black coils tightened,
tightened, till the Little Sly One, who in her first fright had set up
a terrific spitting and yowling, found she had no breath to waste on