Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/141

 in a crotch from which he commanded a good view beneath the foliage, he halted and stood motionless, peering about him for some sign of a likely quarry.

Poised thus, tense, erect, and vigilant, Mustela was a picture of beauty, swift and fierce. In color he was of a rich golden brown, with a patch of brilliant yellow covering throat and chest. His tail was long and bushy, to serve him as a balance in his long, squirrel-like leaps from tree to tree. His pointed ears were large and alert, to catch all the faint, elusive, forest sounds. In length, being a specially fine specimen of his kind, he was perhaps a couple of inches over two feet. His body had all the lithe grace of a weasel, with something of the strength of his great cousin and most dreaded foe, the fisher.

For a time nothing stirred. Then from a distance, came faint but shrill the chirr-r-r-r of a red squirrel. Mustela's discriminating ear located the sound at once. All energy on the instant, he darted toward it springing from branch to branch with amazing speed and noiselessness.

The squirrel, noisy and imprudent after the manner of his tribe, was chattering fussily and bouncing about on his branch, excited over something best known to himself, when a darting, gold-brown shape of doom landed upon the end of the