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 This pathway was the rabbit's main travel road through the swamp.

Redcoat had been sitting there in the cold with the snow sifting down upon him from the overhanging branches for more than an hour. He was cramped and disgusted with the poor hunting. Presently he peeked out from behind the stump and discovered a rabbit coming down this rabbit highway, but as ill luck for the hunter would have it the rabbit also saw Mr. Fox and turned and ran for his life. Ordinarily the fox would not have pursued him. He would have waited in ambush for another rabbit, but since the hunting was so poor pursuit seemed Redcoat's only course, so he went after the unfortunate cottontail bounding lightly over the laurel tops and scurrying around small spruces. Out and in they raced, a race of life and death, in which the fox steadily gained in spite of the rabbit's dodging and turning.

But it happened there was another hunter abroad that night; a surly old wildcat or bay lynx was sitting on an old log, waiting by