Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/79

 ing lynx, so light as to be scarcely audible to their owner himself. Without moving his body he turned his head in the direction of the sound, and stared intently. The lynx, a brilliant tree climber, was one of the very few wild creatures whom he feared; and he held himself in tense readiness to signal for his absent mate to do battle, if necessary, for his nest and young. But the sinister footfalls crept off in another direction, and he knew that his home—which was well concealed from the ground by a bushy growth of Indian pea and wild viburnum—had not been discovered.

A minute or two later the grim listener on his high listening post detected a fairy rustling which was not of stretching twigs or dew-laden leaves. It came from under a fir thicket some fifty or sixty yards away; and so faint it was that other ears than his could scarce have caught it at a distance of ten paces. But he knew it at once for the scurrying of the shy little wood mice over the floor of the dead and crisp fir needles. On downy wings he dropped from his perch and sailed, swift and soundless as thought, straight in beneath the overhanging fir branches. His outstretched talons struck, like lightning, in two directions at once—and in one successfully. In that annihilating clutch a furry little life went