ack was torn from its foundations and borne revolving
up the tide.

The nest of the mink, being low in the stack, was promptly flooded,
driving the angry tenant out. He ran up to the dry top of the stack, and
surveyed the wild scene with surprise. Water, of course, had no terrors
for him; but this tumultuous flood seemed a good thing to keep out of.
He would stay by his refuge for the present, at least. Meanwhile, there
were mice!

[Illustration: "MADLY JOYOUS, HE KILLED, AND KILLED, AND KILLED, FOR THE
JOY OF KILLING."]

The mice, indeed, panic-stricken and forced from their lower nests, were
fairly swarming in the top of the stack. The mink first satiated his
thirst with blood. Next he glutted his hunger with the brains of his
victims. Then, seeing their numbers apparently undiminished, he got
wild with excitement and blood-lust. Darting hither and thither, madly
joyous, he killed, and killed, and killed, for the joy of killing; while
the stack, with its freight of terror and death, went whirling
majestically along the now broader and quieter flood.

How long the slaughter of the helpless mice would have continued, before
the slaughterer tired of the game and crept into a nest to sleep, cannot
be known. By another of Nature's whims, concerned equally with great
matters and with little, it was not left to the joyous mink to decide.
His conspicuous dark body, darting over the light surface of the stack,
caught the eye of a great hawk soaring high above the marshes. Lower and
lower sank the bird, considering,--for the mink was larger game than he
usually chose to hunt. Then, while still too high in the blue to attract
attention from the busy slayer, he narrowed his wings, hardened his
plumage, and shot downward. At a strange sound in the air the mink
looked up,--but not in time to meet that appalling attack. One great set
of talons, steel-strong and edged like knives, clutched him about the
throat, strangling him to helplessness, while another set crushed his
ribs and cut into his vitals. The wise hawk had struck with a thorough
comprehension of the enemy's fighting powers; and had taken care that
there should be no fight. Flying heavily, he carried the long, limp body
off to his high nest in the hills; and the stack drifted on with the
tiny terrified remnant of the mouse-people, till the ebbing tide left it
stranded on a meadow near the foot of the uplands.

Under the Ice-roof

I

Filtering thinly down