or two of cat naps at a time--just long enough to gather
energy for more evil doing.

As he stretched himself again, a sudden barking and snickering came
from a giant spruce on the hill just above. Meeko, the red squirrel,
had discovered a new jay's nest, and was making a sensation over it,
as he does over everything that he has not happened to see before. Had
he known who was listening, he would have risked his neck in a
headlong rush for safety; for all the wild things fear Kagax as they
fear death. But no wild thing ever knows till too late that a weasel
is near.

Kagax listened a moment, a ferocious grin on his pointed face; then he
stole towards the sound. "I intended to kill those young hares first,"
he thought, "but this fool squirrel will stretch my legs better, and
point my nose, and get the sleep out of me--There he is, in the big
spruce!"

Kagax had not seen the squirrel; but that did not matter; he can
locate a victim better with his nose or ears than he can with his
eyes. The moment he was sure of the place, he rushed forward without
caution. Meeko was in the midst of a prolonged snicker at the scolding
jays, when he heard a scratch on the bark below, turned, looked down,
and fled with a cry of terror. Kagax was already halfway up the tree,
the red fire blazing in his eyes.

The squirrel rushed to the end of a branch, jumped to a smaller
spruce, ran that up to the top; then, because his fright had made him
forget the tree paths that ordinarily he knew very well, he sprang out
and down to the ground, a clear fifty feet, breaking his fall by
catching and holding for an instant a swaying fir tip on the way. Then
he rushed pell-mell over logs and rocks, and through the underbrush to
a maple, and from that across a dozen trees to another giant spruce,
where he ran up and down desperately over half the branches, crossing
and crisscrossing his trail, and dropped panting at last into a little
crevice under a broken limb. There he crouched into the smallest
possible space and watched, with an awful fear in his eyes, the rough
trunk below.

Far behind him came Kagax, grim, relentless, silent as death. He paid
no attention to scratching claws nor swaying branches, never looking
for the jerking red tip of Meeko's tail, nor listening for the loud
thump of his feet when he struck the ground. A pair of brave little
flycatchers saw the chase and rushed at the common enemy, striking him
with their beaks, and raising