ould get at
them.

Past the foot of a certain lonely stack by the outer dyke, within sound
of the rushing tide, ran an old drainage ditch, at this time of year
almost dry. Its bottom, where tiny puddles were threaded on a trickle of
running water, was now a thronged resort of water-loving insects, and
small frogs, and imprisoned shiners. To a wandering mink, driven down by
drought from the uplands, it was a wonderful and delightful place, which
he adopted at once as his own particular range. The main ditch, with its
system of lateral feeders, furnished several miles of runway, and the
whole of this rich domain the newcomer preempted, patrolling it
methodically, devoting his whole attention to it, and ready to defend
it against any rival claimant who might appear.

The mink was a male, about twenty inches long, with his rich dark coat
in perfect condition. His pointed, sinister, quietly savage face and
head were set on a long but heavy-muscled neck, almost as thick as the
thickest part of his body. The body itself was altogether snake-like in
its lithe sinuousness, and supported on legs so ridiculously short that
when he was not leaping he seemed to writhe and dart along on his belly
after the fashion of a snake. In spite of this shortness of the legs,
however, his movements, when he had any reason for haste, were of an
almost miraculous swiftness, his whole form seeming to be made up of
subtle and tireless steel springs. When he did not care to writhe and
dart along like a snake, he would arch his long back like a
measuring-worm and go leaping over the ground in jumps of sometimes four
or five feet in length. This method of progression he probably adopted
for the fun of it, in the main; for his hunting tactics were usually
those of stealthy advance and lightning-like attack. Once in a long
while, indeed, by lucky chance he would succeed in catching in one of
these wild leaps, a snipe which flew too low over the ditch or paused
on hovering wing before alighting to forage on the populous ooze. Such
an achievement would afford a pleasant variation to his customary diet
of fish, frogs, beetles, and occasional muskrat.

The mink had been nearly three weeks on his new range, and enjoying
himself hugely in his devastating way, before he observed the big yellow
stack beside the ditch. It was on a day of driving rain-squalls and
premature cold that he first took note of its possibilities. Gliding
furtively around its base, hi