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 the center of some five thousand acres of forest, savannah and swamp. This was the lynx's hunting ground, a hunting ground abounding in bird and animal life and especially rich in quail and rabbits, both swamp rabbits and cottontails. Here food was plentiful and was easily obtained; even in the first weeks of his freedom he had found little difficulty, thanks to his inherited woodcraft, in picking up a living. And here he was fairly safe.

Few poachers invaded these woods, and during the boy's absence in the North little hunting had been done there. Sometimes at night Byng heard or saw negro possum and coon hunters, but these gave him little anxiety. Twice, however, he encountered a more serious problem when Sandy Jim Mayfield followed his pack of long lean deer hounds, hot on the trail of buck or doe, into the one-eared lynx's territory. As luck would have it, on each of these occasions the pack crossed Byng's trail, and it might have fared ill with him had not these dogs been trained so well by Sandy Jim to disregard all the other scents of the woods when they were on the track of a deer.

As it was, Byng had one close call. Sandy Jim, sitting on his wiry little mare in a narrow woods road, listening to the music of his hounds and holding his gun at his shoulder for a quick shot, saw a long brown shape flash across the opening in front