e next moment he closed his great jaws upon the fox, he did not pause
for a single instant, but, lifting the latter clear up from the ground,
ran on without the slightest apparent diminution of speed!

Reynard was seen to struggle and kick, while he squeaked like a shot
puppy; but his cries each moment grew feebler, and his struggles soon
came to an end. The wolf held him transversely in his jaws--just as he
himself but the moment before had carried the ermine.

Lucien saw there was no use in following them, as the wolf ran on with
his prey. With some disappointment, therefore, he was about to return to
the fire, where, to add to his mortification, he knew he would find his
tea-leaves parched to a cinder. He lingered a moment, however, with his
eyes still fixed upon the departing wolf that was just about to
disappear over the crest of a ridge. The fox was still in his jaws, but
no longer struggling. Reynard looked limber and dead, as his legs swung
loosely on both sides of the wolf's head Lucien at that moment saw the
latter suddenly stop in his career, and then drop down upon the surface
of the snow as if dead! He fell with his victim in his jaws, and lay
half doubled up, and quite still.

This strange action would have been a difficult thing for Lucien to
explain, but, almost at the same instant in which he observed it, a puff
of blue smoke shot up over the ridge, and quickly following was heard
the sharp crack of a rifle. Then a head with its cap of raccoon skin
appeared above the snow, and Lucien, recognising the face of Basil, ran
forward to meet him.

Both soon stood over the body of the dead wolf, wondering at what they
saw; but Basil, far more than Lucien--for the latter already knew the
circumstances of that strange scene of death. First there was the great
gaunt body of the wolf stretched along the snow, and quite dead.
Cross-ways in his mouth was the fox, just as he had been carried off;
and across the jaws of the latter, lay the long worm-like body of the
ermine, still retaining between its teeth the half-devoured remains of
the white-footed mouse! A very chain of destroyers! These creatures died
as they had lived, preying one upon the other! Of all four the little
mouse alone was an innocent victim. The other three, though morally
guilty by the laws of man, yet were only acting in obedience to the laws
of Nature and necessity.

Man himself obeys a similar law, as Basil had just shown. Philosophize
as w