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and The Boy, familiarly known as “The Babe,” were exploring the high slopes of the farther shore of Silverwater. It had been an unusually long trip for the Babe’s short legs, and Uncle Andy had considerately called a halt, on the pretext that it was time for a smoke. He knew that the Babe would trudge on till he dropped in his tracks before acknowledging that he was tired. A mossy boulder under the ethereal green shade of a silver birch offered the kind of resting-place, comfortable yet unkempt, which appealed to Uncle Andy’s taste; and there below, over a succession of three low, wooded ridges, lay outspread the enchanting mirror of the lake. The Babe, squatting cross-legged on the turf, had detected a pair of brown rabbits peering out at him from the fringes of a thicket of young firs.

“Perhaps,” he thought to himself, “if we keep very still indeed, they ‘ll come out and play.”

He was about to whisper this suggestion, cautiously, to Uncle Andy, when, from somewhere in the trees behind him, came a loud sound of scrambling, of claws scratching on bark, followed by a thud, a grunt, and a whining, and then the crash of some heavy creature careering through the underbrush.

The rabbits vanished. The Babe, startled, shrank closer to his uncle’s knees, and stared up at him with round eyes of inquiry.

“He ’s in a hurry, all right, and does n’t care who knows it!” chuckled Uncle Andy. But his shaggy brows were knit in some perplexity.

“Who ’s he?” demanded the Babe.

“Well, now,” protested Uncle Andy, as much