s following. When he saw the red eyes of
Kagax, he darted away wildly. A few hundred yards, and the foolish
hare, who could run far faster than his pursuer, dropped in the bushes
again to watch and see if the weasel was still after him.

Kagax was following, swiftly, silently. Again the hare bounded away,
only to stop and scare himself into fits by watching his own trail
till the red eyes of the weasel blazed into view. So it went on for a
half hour, through brush and brake and swamp, till the hare had lost
all his wits and began to run wildly in small circles. Then Kagax
turned, ran the back track a little way, and crouched flat on the
ground.

In a moment the hare came tearing along on his own trail--straight
towards the yellow-brown ball under a fern tip. Kagax waited till he
was almost run over; then he sprang up and screeched. That ended the
chase. The hare just dropped on his fore paws. Kagax jumped for his
head; his teeth met; the hunger began to gnaw, and he drank his fill
greedily.

For a time the madness of the chase seemed to be in the blood he
drank. Keener than ever to kill, he darted away on a fresh trail. But
soon his feast began to tell; his feet grew heavy. Angry at himself,
he lay down to sleep their weight away.

Far behind him, under the pine by the partridge's nest, a long dark
shadow seemed to glide over the ground. A pointed nose touched the
leaves here and there; over, the nose a pair of fierce little eyes
glowed deep red as Kagax's own. So the shadow came to the partridge's
nest, passed over it, minding not the scent of broken eggs nor of the
dead bird, but only the scent of the weasel, and vanished into the
underbrush on the trail.

Kagax woke with a start and ran on. A big bullfrog croaked down on the
shore. Kagax stalked and killed him, leaving his carcass untouched
among the lily pads. A dead pine in a thicket attracted his suspicion.
He climbed it swiftly, found a fresh round hole, and tumbled in upon a
mother bird and a family of young woodpeckers. He killed them all,
tasting the brains again, and hunted the tree over for the father
bird, the great black logcock that makes the wilderness ring with his
tattoo. But the logcock heard claws on the bark and flew to another
tree, making a great commotion in the darkness as he blundered along,
but not knowing what it was that had startled him.

So the night wore on, with Kagax killing in every thicket, yet never
satisfied with killing. He