Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/814

754 big to pursue him down the burrow; but presently he stopped, scraped away the earth on one side, and turned around to face the menace. Small though he was, the weasel would have found him a troublesome and daring antagonist in such narrow quarters. When he saw a glimmer of light reappear at the entrance of the burrow, he understood that his big enemy was not going to attempt the impossible. Reassured, but still hot with wrath, he turned again, and went racing through the black tunnel in search of something whereon to wreak his emotions.

Now, at this moment the lazy old mole who owned these burrows was returning from his tour of investigation. He came to the fork where the shrew had gone by an hour before. The strong, disagreeable, musky smell of the intruder arrested him. His keen nose sniffed at it with resentment and alarm, and told him the whole story there in the dark more plainly than if it had passed in daylight before his purblind eyes. It told him that some time had gone by since the intruder's passing. But what it could not tell him was that the intruder was just now on his way back. After some moments of hesitation the long, cylindrical, limp body of the mole scuffled out into the main tunnel and turned toward the exit. Its movement was rather slow and awkward, owing to the fact that the fore legs were set on each side of the body like flippers—an excellent arrangement for digging but a very bad one for plain walking.

The mole had not advanced more than a yard or so along the main tunnel when again that strong, musky smell smote his nostrils. This time it was fresh and warm. Indeed, it was startlingly imminent. Elongating his soft body till it was not more than half its usual thickness, the mole doubled in his tracks, intent upon the speediest possible retreat. In that very instant, while he was in the midst of his awkward effort to turn, the shrew fell upon him, gripping and tearing his soft, unprotected flank.

The mole was not altogether deficient in character; and he was larger and heavier than his assailant. Seeing that escape was impossible, and stung by the pain of his wounds, he flung himself with energy into the struggle, biting desperately and striving to bear down his lighter opponent. It was a blind smother of a fight, there in the pitch-black narrow tunnel, the walls of which pressed ceaselessly upon it and hemmed it in. From the smother came no sound but an occasional squeak of rage or pain, barely audible to the lurking spiders among the grass stems just overhead. The thin turf heaved vaguely, and the grass blades vibrated to the unseen struggle; but not even the low-flying marsh-hawk could guess the cause of these mysterious disturbances.

For several minutes the mole made a good fight. Then the indomitable savagery of his enemy's attack suddenly cowed him. He shrank and tried to draw away; and the enemy had him by the throat. In that moment the fight was ended; and in the next the invader was satisfying his ravenous appetite.

When this redoubtable little warrior had eaten his fill, he felt a pleasant sense of drowsiness. First he moved a few feet farther along the tunnel, till he reached the point where it was joined by the smaller gallery of his own digging. At this point of vantage, with exits open both ways, he hastily dug himself a little pocket or side chamber where he could curl himself up in comfort. Here he licked his wounds for a minute or two, and carefully washed his face with his clever, handlike fore paws. Then with a sense of perfect security he went to sleep, his nose, most trusty of sentinels, on guard at the threshold of his bedchamber.

While he slept in this unseen retreat, among the short grasses just above his sleep went on the busy mingling of comedy and tragedy, of mirth and birth and death, which makes the sum of life on a summer day in the pastures. Everywhere the grass and the air above were thronged with insects. Through the grass came gliding soundlessly a long, smooth, sinuous brown shape with a quick-darting head and a forked, amber-colored, flickering tongue. The snake's body was about the thickness of a man's thumb, and his back was unobtrusively but exquisitely marked with a reticulation of fine lines. He seemed to be travelling rather aimlessly, doubtless on the watch for any small quarry he might catch sight of; but when he