Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/91

 that life, for them, was one incessant game of dodging death. As he watched their play, Bill began to feel more at home. He had seen rabbits—tame rabbits—before, lots of them; and though he had always hitherto regarded this tribe with toplofty indifference, he now felt distinctly friendly to them. They called up pleasant memories and cheered the solitude. He even had a fleeting impulse to jump up and prance and gambol with them; but his instinct warned him that if he tried it they would take alarm and vanish. He did not want them to go, so he kept quite still.

Then a startling thing happened,—startling even to such unroutable self-possession as Bill's. From the blackness of an alder-thicket just opposite, a shadowy shape, almost as big as Bill himself, shot into the air, with a harsh sound which seemed to paralyze the little players for an instant. In that instant one of them was struck down by a broad, keen-taloned paw. Its dying scream seemed to release its two companions from their trance of terror, and they bounded off into the woods.

The slayer, a big Canada lynx, almost as long in the body as Bill himself, but much slighter in build, lifted his round, tuft-eared snarling face and stood, with one paw on his prey, glaring about him triumphantly with moon-pale, coldly savage eyes. But he crouched again instantly, laying back his tufted ears and baring his long white fangs, as