Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/31

 warned him of the big owl's unexpected retum, although those velvet wings had seemed as silent as the wings of a ghost. So Lotor the Lucky, who might better have been named Lotor the Discreet, remained for the present within his cassena fortress and gave his attention to the booty for which he had nearly paid a high price; and presently he discovered to his disgust that he had risked his hide and his neck for nothing.

Had there been water at hand in which he could have washed the mink, he might have eaten at least a part of it; for the raccoon is loath to swallow meat which has not been dabbled and soaked in water with his own paws. But even if he had been able to prepare it in the approved way, Lotor would probably have left most of this carcass to the woods scavengers. As it was, he left nearly all of it. It was meat strange to his palate, tough, stringy and rank; and, accustomed as he was to the choicest delicacies of the woods, the marshes and the creeks, he ate only the soft inner parts, then lost interest altogether. Giving the mangled, furry body a last contemptuous push with his nose, he ambled to the thicket's edge and thrust his sharp-pointed, black-spectacled face out through the leafy barricade.

The moon, now three nights past the full, had not yet risen high enough to send its pallid radiance down into the woods; but Lotor's eyes could see in