Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/19

 ness. The rest of the litter, less venturesome, peered forth timorously from the edge of their shelter, nibbled the herbage that was within easy reach, and finally huddled down together, for comfort, on the old nest. That same night, while they slept in a furry bunch, a weasel came that way and took it into his triangular head to explore the thicket. He was not hungry, but after the manner of his bloodthirsty tribe he loved killing for its own sake—which most of the other hunting folk of the wilderness do not. He savagely dispatched the whole litter, drank the blood of a couple, devoured the brains of another, tossed the mangled carcases wantonly about, and left them to the next prowler that might come by. A few minutes later a big "fisher" arrived, maliciously pursuing the weasel's trail, and did not disdain the easy repast that had been left for him.

During the sunlit, spring-scented weeks that followed, while the young snowshoe rabbit was growing swiftly to maturity, the favor of the Fates continued to shield him. If a prowling fox chanced to peer, sniffing hungrily, beneath the bush which formed his bivouac (for he knew no home, no specially preferred abiding place), it always happened that some caprice, perhaps some