E-text prepared by Al Haines

CHILDREN OF THE WILD

by

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

Author of "Kings in Exile," "The Feet of the Furtive," etc.

New York
The MacMillan Company

1922

CONTENTS

    I.  THE LITTLE FURRY ONES THAT SLIDE DOWN HILL

   II.  THE BLACK IMPS OF PINE-TOP

  III.  YOUNG GRUMPY AND THE ONE-EYED GANDER

   IV.  LITTLE SWORD AND THE INKMAKER

    V.  ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP

   VI.  TEDDY BEAR'S BEE TREE

  VII.  THE SNOWHOUSE BABY

 VIII.  LITTLE SILK WING

   IX.  A LITTLE ALIEN IN THE WILDERNESS

    X.  WHAT HE SAW WHEN HE KEPT STILL

   XI.  THE LITTLE VILLAGER AND HIS UNFRIENDLY GUESTS

  XII.  THE BABY AND THE BEAR

 XIII.  THE LITTLE SLY ONE

  XIV.  THE DARING OF STRIPES TERROR-TAIL

   XV.  DAGGER BILL AND THE WATER BABIES

CHAPTER I

THE LITTLE FURRY ONES THAT SLIDE DOWN HILL

In the brown, balsam-smelling log cabin on the shores of Silverwater,
loveliest and loneliest of wilderness lakes, the Babe's great thirst
for information seemed in a fair way to be satisfied.  Young as he was,
and city-born, the lure of the wild had nevertheless already caught
him, and the information that he thirsted for so insatiably was all
about the furred or finned or feathered kindreds of the wild.  And here
by Silverwater, alone with his Uncle Andy and big Bill Pringle, the
guide, his natural talent for asking questions was not so firmly
discouraged as it was at home.

But even thus early in this adventurous career, this fascinating and
never-ending quest of knowledge, the Babe found himself confronted by a
most difficult problem.  He had to choose between authorities.  He had
to select between information and information.  He had to differentiate
for himself between what Bill told him and what his Uncle Andy told
him.  He was a serious-minded child, who had already passed through
that most painful period of doubt as to Santa Claus and the Fairies,
and had not yet reached the period of certainty about everything.  He
was capable of both belief and doubt.  So, naturally, he had his
difficulties.

Bill certainly knew an astonishing lot about the creatures of the wild.
But also, like all guides who are worth their salt, he knew an
astonishing lot of things that weren't so.  He had imagination, or he
would never have done for a guide.  When he knew--which was not
often--that he did _not_ know a thing, he could put two and two
together and make it yield the most extraordinary results.  He felt it
one of his first duties to be interesting.  And above all, he felt it
his duty to be infallible.  No one could be expected to have implicit
faith in a guide who was not infallible.  He never acknowledged
insufficient information about anything whatever that pertained to the
woods and waters.  Also he had a very poor opinion of what others might
profess to know.  He felt convinced that so long as he refrained from
any _too_ lively contributions to the science of animal life, no one
would be able to discredit him.  But he was conscientious in his
deductions.  He would never have permitted himself to say that blue
herons wore gum boots in wading, just because he had happened to find
an old gum boot among the reeds by the outlet of the lake, where the
herons did most of their fishing.  He remembered that that gum boot was
one of a pair which had been thrown away by a former visitor to
Silverwater.

Uncle Andy, on the other hand, knew that there was an astonishing lot
_he didn't_ know about animals, and he didn't hesitate to say so.  He
was a reformed sportsman, who, after spending a great part of his life
in happily killing things all over the earth, had come to the quaint
conclusion that most of them were more interesting alive than dead,
especially to themselves.  He found a kindred spirit in the Babe, whose
education, along the lines of maiming cats and sparrows with sling shot
or air gun, had been absolutely neglected.

Uncle Andy was wont to say that there was only one man in all the world
who knew _all_ about all the animals--and that he was not Andrew
Barton, Esq.  At this, Bill would smile proudly.  At first this modesty
on Uncle Andy's part was a disappointment to the Babe.  But it ended in
giving him confidence in whatever Uncle Andy told him; especially after
he came to realize that when Uncle Andy spoke of the only man in the
world who knew _all_ about animals, he did _not_ mean Bill.

But though the whole field of animal lore was one of absorbing interest
to the Babe, from the day when he was so fortunate as to witness a
mother fish-hawk teaching her rather unwilling and unventuresome young
ones to fly, it was his fellow babes of the wild that he was most
anxious to hear about.  In this department of woods lore, Bill was so
deeply ignorant that, not caring to lean _too_ heavily on his
imagination, lest it should break and stick into him, he used to avoid
it quite obstinately.  He would say--"Them youngsters is all alike,
anyhow, an' it ain't worth while to waste no time a-studyin' 'em!"  So
here Uncle Andy had the field all to himself.  Whenever he undertook to
enlighten the Babe on any such subject, Bill would go off somewhere and
scornfully chop down trees.

     *     *     *     *     *     *

Silverwater was fed by many brooks from the deep-wooded surrounding
hills.  Toward one of these, on a certain golden afternoon, Uncle Andy
and the Babe were betaking themselves along the shadowy trail, where
the green-brown moss was soft under foot and their careful steps made
no noise.  When they spoke it was in quiet undertones; for the spirit
of the woods was on the Babe, and he knew that by keeping very quiet
there was always the chance of surprising some fascinating mystery.

The two were going fishing--for Uncle Andy, with a finely human
inconsistency, was an enthusiastic fisherman, and the stream toward
which they were making their way was one of deep pools and cool
"stillwaters" where the biggest fish were wont to lie during the hot
weather.  Uncle Andy had a prejudice against those good people who were
always sternly consistent, and he was determined that he would never
allow himself to become a crank; so he went on enthusiastically killing
fish with the same zest that he had once brought to the hunting of
beast and bird.

While they were yet several hundred yards from the stream, suddenly
there came to their ears, unmistakable though muffled by the
intervening trees, the sound of a brisk splash, as if something had
fallen into the water.  Uncle Andy stopped short in his tracks,
motionless as a setter marking his bird.  The Babe stopped likewise,
faithfully imitating him.  A couple of seconds later came another
splash, as heavy as the first; and then, in quick succession, two
lighter ones.

For a moment or two the Babe kept silence, though bursting with
curiosity.  Then he whispered tensely--"What's that?"

"Otter," replied Uncle Andy, in a murmur as soft as the wind in the
sedge-tops.

"Why?" continued the Babe, meaning to say--"But what on earth are they
doing?" and trusting that Uncle Andy would appreciate the
self-restraint of the monosyllable.

"Sliding down hill," muttered Uncle Andy, without turning his head.
Then, holding up his hand as a sign that there were to be no more
questions asked, he crept forward noiselessly; and the Babe followed at
his heels.

After two or three minutes the sounds were repeated in the same
succession as before--first two heavy splashes, and then two lighter
ones.  Unable to ask questions, the Babe was obliged to think for
himself.

He had only a vague idea what otters were like, but he knew a good deal
about sliding down hill.  He pictured to himself a high, rough bank
leading down to the water; but as not even Bill's daring imagination
would have represented the gamesome beasts as employing toboggans or
hand-sleds, he thought it must be rather bumpy and uncomfortable work
coasting over the roots and rocks on one's own unprotected anatomy.

The sounds continued, growing louder and louder, till the two
adventurers must have been within thirty or forty feet of the stream;
and they were creeping as noiselessly as a shadow slips over the grass,
in the hope of catching the merrymakers at their game.  But suddenly
there came one great splash, heavy and prolonged, as if all the sliders
had come down close together.  And then silence.  Uncle Andy crouched
motionless for several minutes, as if he had been turned into a stump.
Then he straightened himself up with a disappointed air.

"Gone!" he muttered.   "Cleared out!  They've heard us or smelt us!"

"Oh!" exclaimed the Babe in a voice of deep concern; though, as a
matter of fact, he was immensely relieved, the strain of the prolonged
tension and preternatural stillness having begun to make him feel that
he must make a noise or burst.

Two minutes later they came out on the banks of the stream.

The stream at this point was perhaps twenty-five feet in width, deep,
dark, and almost without current.  Only by noting the bend of the long
watergrasses could one tell which way it ran.  The hither bank was low
and grassy, with a fallen trunk slanting out into the water.  But the
shore opposite was some twelve or fifteen feet high, very steep, and
quite naked, having been cut by the floods from a ridge of clay.  Down
the middle of this incline a narrow track had been worn so smooth that
it gleamed in the sun almost like ice.

As he stared across the water a dozen questions crowded to the Babe's
lips.  But he realized in time that the answers to them were fairly
obvious to himself, and he heroically choked them back.  Had he not
that very morning been rebuked by his uncle for asking too many of what
he called "footy" questions?  But one burst forth now, in spite of
himself.

"What do they do it for?" he demanded--having perhaps a vague idea that
all the motives of the wild creatures were, or ought to be, purely
utilitarian.

Uncle Andy turned upon him a withering look; and he shifted his feet
uneasily, convicted of another "footy" question.

"What do you slide down hill for?" inquired Uncle Andy sarcastically.

"Oh!" said the Babe hastily.  "I see.  And now are we going to catch
some fish?"

But Uncle Andy had stood his rod in a bush and sat down on the fallen
tree; and now he was getting out his old black pipe.

"Well now," he answered presently, "I don't think it would be much use
trying.  What do you think?"

"Of course not," answered the Babe.  "Otter have scared 'em all away."

"You really are doing very well," said Uncle Andy, "if you _did_ ask
that one fool question.  When we were creeping up on the otter, to try
and get a look at them while they were playing, you did very well
indeed.  You stepped as light as a cat, and that's not easy mind, I
tell you, when one's not trained to it.  You didn't even breathe too
hard--and I know you must have been just bursting with excitement.
You've got the makings of a first-rate woodsman in you, if you take
pains."

The Babe's small chest swelled with pride; for commendation from Uncle
Andy was a scarce article.  He too sat down on the fallen trunk and
began digging at the bark with his knife to hide his exultation.

"I suppose now," went on Uncle Andy presently, when his pipe was
drawing well, "you know quite a lot about otter."

"Nothing at all but what Bill's told me," answered the Babe with fine
diplomacy.

"Forget it!" said Uncle Andy; and went on smoking in thoughtful
silence.  Presently he remarked--"This otter family appears to have
been having a pretty good time!"

"Great!" said the Babe laconically.

"Well," continued Uncle Andy, regarding him with approval, "there was
once another otter family, away up on the Little North Fork of the
Ottanoonsis, that used to have such good times till at last they struck
a streak of bad luck."

"Did you know them?" asked the Babe.

"Well, not as you might say intimately," answered Uncle Andy, with a
far-away look in his grey eyes.  "You see, they had no way of knowing
how nice I was, so they never admitted me into their family circle.
But I knew a lot more about them than they ever guessed, I can tell
you.  When the flies weren't too bad I used to lie by the hour behind a
thick bush, never stirring a finger, and watch them."

"My, but how tired you must have got!" interrupted the Babe feelingly.

"I don't _have_ to twiddle my fingers, and scratch my head, and jump up
and down every two minutes and a half," said Uncle Andy rather
severely.  "But, as I was going to say, they also got used to seeing me
sitting on the bank, quiet and harmless, till they no longer felt so
shy of me as they did of Jim Cringle, my guide.  They knew Jim was an
enemy, and they gave him a wide berth always.  But they seemed to think
I wasn't of much account."

"Oh!" protested the Babe politely.  It did not seem to him quite right
that Uncle Andy should be regarded lightly, even by an otter.

"Well, you know, I _wasn't_ of much account.  I was neither dangerous,
like Jim Cringle, nor good to eat, like a muskrat or a pickerel.  So I
don't appear any more in this yarn.  If you find yourself wondering how
I came to know about some of the things I'm going to tell you, just
make believe I got it from the chickadee, who is the most confidential
little chap in the world, or from the whisky-Jack, who makes a point,
as you may have observed, of knowing everybody else's business."

"Or from Jim Cringle?" inquired the Babe demurely.

But Uncle Andy only frowned.  He always discouraged the Babe's attempts
at raillery.

"The two Little Furry Ones," he continued, after pressing down the
tobacco in his pipe, "were born in a dry, warm, roomy den in the bank,
under the roots of an old birch that slanted out over the water.  The
front door was deep under water.  But as the old otters had few enemies
to dread, being both brave and powerful, they had also a back entrance
on dry land, hidden by a thicket of fir bushes.  The two furry 'pups'
were at first as sprawling and helpless as newborn kittens, though of
course a good deal bigger than any kittens you have ever seen.  And
being so helpless, their father and mother never left them alone.  One
always stayed with them while the other went away to hunt trout or
muskrat."

"Why, what _could_ get at them in there?" interrupted the Babe.

"You see," explained Uncle Andy graciously, "either a fox or a weasel
_might_ come in by the back door--if they were hungry enough to take
the risk.  Or what was much more likely, that slim, black, murderous
robber, the mink, might come swimming in by the front entrance, pop his
narrow, cruel head above the water, see the youngsters alone, and be at
their throats in a twinkling.  The old otters, who were very devoted
parents, were not running any risks like that, I can tell you."

"I guess not!" agreed the Babe, wagging his head wisely.

"Well," went on Uncle Andy, "just _because_ those level-headed old
otters were always ready for it, nothing happened.  You'd better make a
note of that.  If you are always ready for trouble when the other
fellow makes it, he will be pretty shy about beginning.  That's why the
foxes and the weasels and the minks never came around.

"When the Little Furry Ones were about the size of five months' kittens
they were as handsome a pair of youngsters as you are ever likely to
set eyes upon.  Their fur, rich and soft and dark, was the finest ever
seen.  Like their parents, they had bodies shaped for going through the
water at a tremendous speed--built like a bulldog's for strength, and
like an eel's for suppleness."

"Not _slimy_!" protested the Babe, who had hated eels whole-heartedly
ever since the day when he had tried to take one off the hook.

"Of course not!" answered Uncle Andy impatiently.  "As I was going to
say, they were shaped a good deal like those seals you've seen in the
Zoo, only that instead of flippers they had regulation legs and feet,
and also a tail.  It was a tail worth having, too, and not merely
intended for ornament.  It was very thick at the base and tapering,
something like a lizard's, and so powerful that one twist of it could
drive its owner through the water like a screw."

"Wish I could swim that way!" murmured the Babe, trying to do the
movement, as he imagined it, with his legs.

"But though the Little Furry Ones were just built for swimming,"
continued Uncle Andy, graciously overlooking the interruption, "they
were actually afraid of it.  They liked to see their father or their
mother dive smoothly down into the clear, goldy-brown water of their
front door, and out into that patch of yellow sunlight shimmering on
the weedy bottom.  But when invited to follow, they drew back into the
corner and pretended to be terribly busy.

"One fine morning, however, to their great delight they were led out by
the back door, under the bush, and introduced to the outside world.
How huge and strange it looked to them!  For a few minutes they stole
about on their absurdly short, sturdy legs, poking their noses into
everything, and jumping back startled at the strange smells they
encountered; while their parents, lying down nearby, watched them
lazily.  At last, beginning to feel more at home in this big, airy
world, they fell to romping with each other on the sunny bank, close
beside the water.  Presently their parents got up and came over beside
them.  The father slipped gracefully in, and began diving, darting this
way and that, and throwing himself half-way out of the water.   It was
most interesting, I can tell you, and the two little Furry Ones stopped
their play, at the very edge of the bank, to watch him.  But when he
called to them coaxingly to come in with him and try it, they turned
away their heads and pretended to think it wasn't worth looking at
after all.  They would rather look at the trees and the sky, and kept
staring up at them as if perfectly fascinated.  And _while_ they were
staring upwards in this superior way, they got a great surprise.  Their
mother slily slipped her nose under them and threw them, one after the
other, far out into the water."

"Ow!" exclaimed the Babe with a little gasp of sympathy.  He himself
felt the shock of that sudden, chill plunge.

Uncle Andy chuckled.

"That's just the way they felt," said he.  "When they came to the top
again they found, to their surprise, that they could swim; and feeling
most indignant and injured they struck out straight for shore.  But
there, between them and the good dry ground, swam their mother, and
would not let them land.  They did not see how mothers could be so
heartless.  But there was no help for it; so they swam out again very
haughtily and joined their father in mid-stream.  And before they knew
it they were enjoying themselves immensely.

"And now life became much more interesting to them.  For a bit it was
harder to keep them out of the water than it had been to get them into
it.  They had their first lessons in fishing.  And though they were too
clumsy at first to catch even a slow, mud-grubbing sucker, they found
the attempt most interesting.  The stream just opposite their home was
deep and quiet, but a little way below, the current ran strong; and
once, having ridden down it gaily for a couple of hundred yards, they
found themselves unable to swim back against it.  At first they battled
bravely and were most surprised to find themselves making so little
progress.  Then they grew tired; and then frightened, and they were
just being carried off down stream by this strange, soft, irresistible
force when their mother arrived.  The current was nothing to her.  She
took them on her back, and shot off up stream again with them.  After
that they would ride on her back, or on their father's whenever they
got tired.  And their parents began to take them on long trips up and
down stream.  You see, their housekeeping being so simple, they didn't
mind going away even for a couple of days at a time, and leaving the
house to look after itself."

"I don't think I'd like to be wet like that _all_ the time, even in
summer," remarked the Babe, shaking his head thoughtfully.

"Oh, they weren't that.  They used to go ashore and, in spite of their
ridiculously short legs, make most respectably long journeys through
the woods to some other stream, pretending, I suppose, that the fish
over there had a different flavor.  Sometimes, too, when they came upon
a patch of smooth, mossy ground, they would have a wild romp, as if
they had just been let out of school--a sort of game of tag, in which
the father and mother played just as hard as the youngsters.  Or they
would have a regular tug of war, pulling on opposite ends of a stick,
till the moss was all torn up as if a little cyclone had loafed along
that way.  Then one day they came to a clay bank, something like that
one across yonder.  The old ones had been there before, but not for
some time, and the clay had got all dry and hard.  But the father and
mother knew very well how to fix that.  When they had slid down a
couple of times with their fur all dripping the track was smooth as
oil.  As for the youngsters, you may depend upon it they did not need
any coaxing or persuasion to make them believe _that_ was a good game."

"I should think not!" murmured the Babe, looking longingly over the
stream to where the wet slide glistened in the sun, and wishing that he
might try it without any regard whatever to the seat of his little
trousers.

"Taking it all together it was a pretty jolly life, I can tell you,
there in the sweet-smelling, shadowy woods and sunny waters.  Then one
day all at once, as quick as falling off a log, everything was changed."

Uncle Andy paused to relight his pipe.  After a few seconds the Babe's
impatience got the better of him; and before he could stop himself he
blurted out "Why?"  The moment he had spoken he knew it was a fool
question to ask, and he flushed.  But to his grateful relief Uncle did
not seem to hear.

"A hunter from the city came that way.  He had a good eye, a repeating
rifle, and no imagination whatever.  With the luck that sometimes comes
to those fellows, he was sitting under a tree near the bank, staring
across at the otter-slide (which did not mean anything whatever or
suggest anything to him, but was merely a strip of bare clay), when the
otter family came to slide.  The father started down.  It was most
interesting--so the stranger under the tree, who was as spry as a
sparrowhawk, shot instantly; and the otter came down in a crumpled
heap.  The mother might have escaped; but for just one second she
hesitated, glancing round to see if her little ones were out of danger.
That second was enough for the smart shot across the water.  She
dropped.  It was good shooting, of course.  The two little ones,
horrified by the spiteful noise, and quite unable to understand what
had happened, shrank away into some thick bushes and lay very still,
waiting for their mother to come and tell them the danger was past."

"And she could never come!" murmured the Babe thoughtfully.

"Well, she didn't," snorted Uncle Andy, the discourager of sentiment.
Fairly reeking with sentiment himself, at heart, he disliked all
manifestation of it in himself or others.  He liked it left to the
imagination.  "They never stirred for an hour or more," he went on.
"Then at last they stole out and began looking everywhere for those
lost parents.  All about the slide they hunted--among the bushes at the
top, in the water and the rushes at the bottom--but they found nothing.
For the man had come in his canoe and carried off his victims.

"All day long the two Little Furry Ones continued their search.  But
you would not have known them for the same creatures as those which had
started out that morning.  Then they had played carelessly and gone
boldly, thinking not of enemies and fearing none.  Now they crept
noiselessly, sniffing this way and that, and never showing their noses
outside a thicket without first taking observations.  For life was now
a very different matter with them.  Never in all their lives before had
they come across so many hostile and threatening smells as they
encountered this one afternoon.  But then, to be sure, they had never
looked for them before.  They were all the time running into trails of
mink, or weasel, or wildcat; and it seemed to them as if the world had
suddenly become quite full of foxes.  They were painfully surprised,
for they had never thought there were so many disagreeable creatures in
the world.  You see, being so young and inexperienced, it never
occurred to them that one fox or one weasel could make quite a lot of
trails.  So they kept having palpitations every other minute.

"It was just as well, however, that they got such an exaggerated idea
of the numbers of their enemies.  For it was astonishing how quickly
the news got around that the old otters were dead.  Toward sunset that
evening, when the two lonely youngsters, puzzled and miserable, stole
back to their old den under the bank, they found that a mink had dared
to kill a big trout in their own pool.  There were the remains, and the
presumptuous intruder's tracks, almost at their very door.  They were
indignant, and the thick hair bristled on their necks.  But, realizing
suddenly how hungry they were, they did not scorn to eat the stranger's
leavings.  Then they dived into their den; and after sniffing about and
whimpering lonesomely for a while, they curled themselves up close
together and went to sleep.  It had been a strange and dreadful day.

"As you may imagine, these two youngsters had never yet been trained to
the useful habit of sleeping with one ear open.  They had left that to
their parents.  But to-night, even while they slept most soundly,
something within them seemed to keep watch.  Whatever it was, suddenly
it woke them.  And instantly they were tremendously wide awake.  Before
they knew why they did it, they were uncurled from the ball in which
they slept and, crouching side by side, glaring savagely up the narrow
passage that led to their back door.

"There they saw a pair of cruel eyes, small and flaming, and set very
close together, which seemed to float slowly down towards them."

Here Uncle Andy was so inconsiderate as to pause, as if he wanted to
think.  The Babe could not hold himself in.

"Was it a snake?" he demanded breathlessly.

"There you go again, interrupting," growled Uncle Andy, most unfairly.
"And who ever heard of a snake's eyes flaming?  But the Little Furry
Ones knew what it was at once; and the hair stood straight up on their
necks.  Of course they were frightened a little.  But most of all were
they in a rage at such an impudent intrusion.  There was no sign of
fear, I can tell you, in the low growl which came from between their
long, white, snarling teeth.  And those stealthy eyes halted.  For half
a minute, motionless, they studied the crouching and defiant
youngsters, evidently surprised to see how big and strong they had
grown.  Then, very slowly and with dignity, they withdrew and presently
disappeared.  For the weasel, though perhaps the most fearless assassin
that prowls the woods, is no fool.  And he saw that the otter children
had grown too big for him to handle.

"The youngsters were a good deal set up, of course, by this
unexpectedly easy rebuff of so venomous an enemy; but there was no more
thought of sleep for them.  It made them terribly anxious, the idea of
anything stealing in on them that way, by the back door.  For a long
time they lay there motionless, their wide eyes staring into the dark,
their ears straining to every faint, mysterious sound, their sensitive
noses questioning every scent that came breathing in to them from the
still night forest.  At last they heard a stealthy footfall outside the
back door.  It was as light--oh, lighter than a falling leaf.  But
_they_ heard it.  If you and I had such ears as that, maybe we could
hear the grasses growing."

"_That_ would be fun," muttered the Babe.

"And then," continued Uncle Andy, "they smelt a faint, musky scent.  I
_don't_ think it would be fun if we had such noses as that.  We'd smell
so many smells we did not want to.  Eh?  And I tell you, the youngsters
did not want to smell that smell.  It was a fox.  They couldn't fight a
fox.  Not yet.  With their hearts in their throats they backed softly
down to the front door, and waited, ready to slip into the water.

"But fortunately the fox was cunning, and proud of it.  He had heard a
rumor that the old otters were dead.  But he was much too cunning to
believe all he heard.  It would be just like them, he thought, to
pretend they were dead, so that he might come in and get caught.
Assuredly there was a good, strong, live otter smell coming up out of
that hole.  He poked his nose down and gave a very loud sniff, then
cocked his ear sharply and listened.  Nothing stirred.  Had it been
only the little ones, down there all by themselves, he thought, they
would have been frightened enough to jump.  So, it was plainly a trap.
Waving his great bushy tail complaisantly, he tiptoed off to hunt
rabbits, pleased with the notion that somebody else was going to get
taken in.

"The youngsters stayed where they were, close beside the water.  The
first glimmer of dawn, striking on the misty surface of the pool
outside, struggled up into the den.  The youngsters turned to greet it,
with the thought, perhaps, that it was time to go fishing.  Just at
this moment the mink, who had been looking for the remnants of his
trout where he had left them on the bank (he was a fool, of course,
ever to have left them there), came diving into the deep front door of
the den to avenge himself on the unprotected little ones.  His slim
black form was visible as it rose through the greying water.  As the
pointed head popped above the surface, it was confronted by two
grinning heads which snarled savagely in its face and snapped at it in
fearless defiance.  The mink was surprised and pained.  He had expected
to find those two youngsters huddled together and already half
frightened to death just at being alone.  He had _not_ expected to find
them half so big.  In fact, there at home, and guarding their own
domain, they looked to him much bigger than they really were.  A very
small man, you know, may look about seven feet high when he stands in
his own door and tells you to keep out.  Eh, what?  Well, the mink
suddenly felt sort of bashful about intruding.  He discreetly withdrew,
without thinking to make inquiry about the fish.  And his sudden
diffidence was very fortunate for the two Little Furry Ones.  For the
mink, let me tell you, would have been a tough proposition for them to
tackle.

"This sudden departure of the terrible mink made the two youngsters
feel almost bigger than was good for them.  But the otter, fortunately,
is born cautious, no matter how courageous he may be.  So the
youngsters were not spoiled by their good luck.  They waited a few
minutes, to give the mink a chance to get good and far away.  Then they
dived forth into the misty pool.  Never before had they seen one
quarter so many fish in it.  They breakfasted very well on a couple of
plump, silvery chub--though they would have preferred trout, of
course--and then, just for sport, began killing as many as they could,
only swallowing a bite out of each, from the thick, flaky meat behind
the head.  They were young, you see--though not more foolish than lots
of sportsmen we hear about.  In a very few minutes, of course, every
fish that could get away had got away as far as possible from that
deadly pool.  And then the two reckless fishermen crawled ashore and
began a tug of war with a stick.  They could just not help playing, you
see, any more than kittens or puppies could; though they were still
lonely and anxious.  And in their play they kept very close to the
water's edge, in case the fox should happen along to inquire after
their parents.

"The fox did not turn up.  But after some time they caught sight of a
great, dark bird winnowing his way slowly above the tree tops.  Just to
be on the safe side, they got into the water so quickly that one of
them, to save time, threw himself in backwards.  They did not know that
it was only a fishhawk, an amiable soul, quite indifferent to such
delicacies as young otters.  Another thing they did not know was that
if the fishhawk _had_ wanted them, he could have caught them more
comfortably in the water than on shore.

"When the great bird was well out of sight they started off down
stream, partly to have another look for their lost parents, partly
because they had nothing better to do.  But they did not go very far
that day, or have any more very exciting adventures.  They spent most
of their time in the water, where they had no foe to watch out for
except the mink.  And, as the fish had now learned to beware of them,
they had enough to do in satisfying their lively appetites.  That night
they slept in the den, lying close to the water's edge, lest the fox
should come.  And they had no visitors.

"The next day they were feeling more confident, more sure of
themselves.  So they set out on a longer expedition.  In the course of
the morning they killed a big muskrat, after a sharp fight, and felt
terribly proud of themselves.  They got bitten, of course, and had
their fur all mussed up, so it meant a long, elaborate toilet in the
warm grass by the water's edge.  And it was not till early in the
afternoon that they came once more to the fateful slide where their
parents had so mysteriously vanished.

"At the sight of it, as they came upon it suddenly around a bend of the
stream, their fur bristled and they crouched flat, glancing angrily
this way and that.  Then they stole forward, and once more explored the
whole place minutely.  At last, finding nothing to alarm them, in an
absent-minded way one of the two went down the slide, splash into the
cool brown water.  The other followed at once.  The temptation was
simply not to be resisted, you know.  And in a minute more they were
both hard at it, having the time of their lives--hawks, foxes, minks,
and vanished parents alike forgotten."

"Oh!" protested the Babe in a shocked voice.

"You may say 'Oh!'" retorted Uncle Andy, "but let me tell you, if the
wild creatures hadn't pretty short memories, they would have a very
unhappy time.

"Well, they had been enjoying themselves and forgetting their troubles
for some little time, when, just as it came down the slide, one of them
was grabbed and pulled under.  The mink had arrived and decided to
settle accounts with the youngsters.  He had probably been thinking it
over, and come to the conclusion that they were getting too bumptious.
Darting up through the water, he had snapped savagely at the careless
player's throat.

"But the latter--it was the female, and spry, I can tell you--had felt
that darting terror even before she had time to see it, and twisted
aside like an eel.  So instead of catching her by the throat, as he had
so amiably intended, the mink only got her leg, up close by the
shoulder.  It was a deep and merciless grip; but instead of
squealing--which she could not have done anyhow, being already under
water--the Little Furry One just sank her sharp white teeth into the
back of her enemy's neck, and held on for dear life.  It was _exactly_
the right thing to do, though she did not know it.  For she had got her
grip so high up on the mink's neck that he could not twist his head
around far enough to catch her by the throat.  Deep down at the bottom
of the pool the two rolled over and over each other; and the mink was
most annoyed to find how strong the youngster was, and how set in her
ways.  Moreover, he had been under water longer than she had, and was
beginning to feel he'd like a breath of fresh air.  He gave a kick with
his powerful hind legs, and, as the Little Furry One had no objection,
up they came.

"Now, the other youngster had not been able, just at first, to make out
what was happening.  He thought his sister had gone down to the bottom
for fun.  But when he saw her coming up, locked in that deadly struggle
with their old enemy, his heart swelled with fury.  He sprang clear out
into the deep water when the struggling pair reached the surface,
lashing and splashing, and the mink had only bare time to snatch a
single breath of air before he found another adversary on his back, and
was borne down inexorably to the bottom.

"Just about this time a perfectly new idea flashed across the mink's
mind, and it startled him.  For the first time in his life he thought
that perhaps he was a fool.  Young otters seemed to be so much older
than he had imagined them, so much more unreasonable and bad-tempered,
and to have so many teeth.  It was a question, he decided--while he was
being mauled around among the water weeds--that would bear some
thinking over.  He wanted to think about it right away.  There was no
time like the present for digesting these new ideas.  Seeing a big root
sticking out of the bank, close to the bottom, with a tremendous effort
he clawed himself under it and scraped off his antagonists.  Shooting
out on the other side, he darted off like an eel through the water
grass, and hurried away up stream to a certain hollow log he knew,
where he might lick his bites and meditate undisturbed.  The two Little
Furry Ones stared after him for a moment, then crawled out upon the
bank and lay down in the sunny grass."

Uncle Andy got up with an air of decision.  "Let's go catch some fish,"
he said.  "They ought to be beginning to rise about now, over by Spring
Brook."

"But what became of the two Little Furry Ones after that?" demanded the
Babe, refusing to stir.

"Well, _now_," protested Uncle Andy in an injured voice, "you _know_ I
ain't like Bill and some other folk.  I don't know everything.  But
I've every reason to believe that, with any kind of otter luck, they
lived to grow up and have families of their own--and taught every one
of them, you may be sure, to slide down hill.  As likely as not, that
very slide over yonder belongs to one of their families.  Now come
along and don't ask any more questions."

CHAPTER II

THE BLACK IMPS OF PINE-TOP

"I think I'd _like_ to be a bird," murmured the Babe, wistfully gazing
up at the dark green, feathery top of the great pine, certain of whose
branches were tossing and waving excitedly against the blue, although
there was not a breath of wind to ruffle the expanse of Silverwater.
"I _think_ I'd like it--rather."  He added the qualification as a
prudent after-thought, lest Uncle Andy should think him foolish.

"In _summer_!" suggested Uncle Andy, following the Babe's eyes toward
the agitated pine-top.

"Of _course_ in summer!" corrected the Babe hastily.  "It must be awful
to be a bird in winter!"  And he shuddered.

"You'd better not say 'of course' in that confident way," said Uncle
Andy rather severely.  "You know so many of the birds go away south in
the winter; and they manage to have a pretty jolly time of it, I should
think."

For a moment the Babe looked abashed.  Then his face brightened.

"But then, it _is_ summer, for _them_, isn't it?" said he sweetly.

Uncle Andy gave him a suspicious look, to see if he realized the
success of his retort.  "Had me there!" he thought to himself.  But the
Babe's face betrayed no sign of triumph, nothing but that eager
appetite for information of which Uncle Andy so highly approved.

"So it depends on what kind of a bird, eh, what?" said he, deftly
turning the point.  Then he scratched a sputtering sulphur match on the
long-suffering leg of his trousers.

"Yes," said the Babe, with more decision now.  "I'd like to be a crow."

Uncle Andy smoked meditatively for several minutes before replying,
till the Babe began to grow less confident as to the wisdom of his
choice.  But as he gazed up at those green pine-tops, so clear against
the blue, all astir with black wings and gay, excited _ca_-ings, he
took courage again.  Certainly _those_ crows, at least, were enjoying
themselves immensely.

And he had always had a longing to be able to play in the tops of the
trees.

"Well," said Uncle Andy at last, "perhaps you're not so _very_ far off,
this time.  If I couldn't be an eagle, or a hawk, or a wild goose, or
one of those big-horned owls that we hear every night, or a
humming-bird, then I'd rather be a crow than most.  A crow has got
enemies, of course, but then he's got brains, so that he knows how to
make a fool of most of his enemies.  And he certainly does manage to
get a lot of fun out of life, taking it all in all, except when the owl
comes gliding around his roosting places in the black nights, or an
extra bitter midwinter frost catches him after a rainy thaw."

He paused and drew hard on his pipe, with that far-away look in his
eyes which the Babe had learned to regard as the forerunner to a story.
There were some interesting questions to ask, of course; but though
bursting with curiosity as to why anyone should find it better to be a
wild goose, or even a hummingbird, than a crow, the Babe sternly
repressed himself.  He would ask those questions by and by, that he
promised himself.  But he had learned that to speak inopportunely was
sometimes to make Uncle Andy change his mind and shut up like an
oyster.  He was determined that he would not open his mouth till the
story should be well under way, till his uncle should be himself too
much interested to be willing to stop.  And then, to his horror, just
as he was recording this sagacious resolution in his mind, he heard
himself demanding:

"But why after a rainy thaw?"

It was out before he could choke it back.  There was nothing for him to
do but stick to it and gaze at his uncle with disarming innocence.
Uncle Andy turned upon him a glance of slow contumely.

"If you were going to be caught out in a blizzard, would you rather be
in dry clothes or in wet ones?" he inquired.

The Babe smiled apologetically and resumed his study of the agitated
pine-tops, whence, from time to time, a crow, or two or three, would
burst forth for a brief, whirling flight, as if to show how it was
done.  Then other flights were made, which seemed to the Babe extremely
brief and hesitating, as if the flyers were nervous when they found
themselves out clear of the branches and suspended on their own wings
over the empty deeps of air.  Presently there was a sudden tumultuous
outburst of _ca_-ing, the branches shook, and a whole flock, perhaps
two score or more, swarmed into the air.  After a few moments of
clamorous confusion they all flew off in the direction of the muddy
flats at the lower end of the lake.  The pine-tops subsided into
stillness.  But an occasional hoarse croak or muttered guttural showed
that a few of their occupants had been left at home.  The Babe wondered
what it had all been about, but he succeeded in holding his tongue.

In a moment or two this heroic self-restraint had its reward.

"Trying to show some of the youngsters how to fly, and jeering at the
timid ones and the stupid ones!" explained Uncle Andy.

"Oh!" said the Babe, with a long, appreciative inflection.

Uncle Andy paused, leaving an opening for more questions.  But the Babe
refused to be drawn, so presently, with a comprehending grin, he went
on:

"It's rather a small affair for crows, you know, this colony of theirs
here on Silverwater.  I suppose they've been crowded out from the
places they really prefer, along the skirts of the settlements on the
other side of the Ridge.  They would rather live always somewhere near
the farms and the cleared fields.  Not that they have any special
affection for man.  Far from it.  They dislike him, and distrust him,
and seem to think him a good deal of a fool, too.  His so-called
'scarecrows' are a great joke to them, and have been known at times to
afford some fine materials for the lining of their nests.  But they
find him so useful in many really important ways that they establish
their colonies in his neighborhood whenever they possibly can."

Here Uncle Andy made another long pause.  He looked at the Babe
suspiciously.

"Is anything the matter?" he demanded.

"No, thank you, Uncle Andy," replied the Babe politely.

"But you haven't asked a single question for at least seven minutes,"
said Uncle Andy.

"I was too busy listening to you," explained the Babe.  "But there's
one I'd like to ask, if it's all the same to you."

"Well, fire away," said his uncle.

"_Why_ did they all fly away like that, as if they had just remembered
something awfully important?  And why would you rather be a little tiny
humming-bird than a crow?  And why did it take the whole flock that way
to teach the young ones to fly?  And--and why are they afraid, when
they are _born_ to fly?  And why do they make fun of the stupid ones?
And why would you like to be a wild goose?  And, and--"

"Stop!  stop!" cried Uncle Andy.  "I didn't know you had a Gatling
about you when I told you to fire away.  You wait and shoot those
questions at Bill, just like that, to-night."

"Well, but why--"

"No, you must not interrupt," insisted Uncle Andy.

"But you _asked_ me!  I was just as quiet--"

"I didn't know what I was doing!" said his uncle.  "And I can't
possibly answer all those questions.  Why, I could never begin to
remember half of them."

"I can," interposed the Babe.

"Oh, you needn't mind," said Uncle Andy, hastily.  "But perhaps, if you
listen with great care, you _may_ find answers to some of them in what
I am going to tell you.  Of course, I don't promise, for I don't know
what you asked me.  But _maybe_ you'll hear something that will throw
some light on the subject."

"Thank you very much," said the Babe.

"There were only two young ones in the nest," said Uncle Andy, in his
sometimes irrelevant way, which seemed deliberately designed to make
the Babe ask questions.  "The nest was a big, untidy structure of
sticks and dead branches; but it was strongly woven for all its
untidiness, because it had to stand against the great winds sweeping
down over the Ridge.  Inside it was very nicely and softly lined with
dry grass, and some horse-hair, and a piece of yellow silk from the
lining of what had once been a ruffle or something like that that women
wear.  The nest was in a tall pine, which stood at one end of a grove
of ancient fir trees overlooking a slope of pasture and an old white
farmhouse with a big garden behind it.  Nearly all the trees had crows'
nests in their tops, but in most of the other nests there were three or
four young crows."

As Uncle Andy paused again at this point the Babe, who was always
polite, felt that he was really expected to ask a question here.  If he
did not, it might look as if he were not taking an interest.  He would
rather ask too many questions than run the risk of seeming
inappreciative.

"_Why_ were there only two young ones in the nest in the pine tree?" he
inquired.

It was very hard to know sometimes just what would please Uncle Andy,
and what wouldn't.  But this time it was quite all right.

"Now, that's a proper, sensible question," said he.  "I was just coming
to that.  You see, there ought to have been four youngsters in that
nest, too, for there had been four greeny-blue, brown-spotted eggs to
start with.  But even crows have their troubles.  And the pair that
owned this particular nest were a somewhat original and erratic couple.
When the mother had laid her last egg and was getting ready to sit, she
decided to take an airing before settling down to work.  Though her
mate was not at hand to guard the nest, she flew off down to the farm
to see if there was anything new going on among those foolish men, or
perhaps to catch a mouse among the cornstalks."

"Do _crows_ eat _mice_?" demanded the Babe in astonishment.

"Of course they do," answered Uncle Andy impatiently.  "Everybody that
eats meat at all eats mice, except us human beings.  And in some parts
of the world we, too, eat them, dipped in honey."

"Oh--h--h!" shuddered the Babe.

"Well, as I was going to say when you interrupted me, no sooner was she
well out of the way than a red squirrel, who had been watching from the
nearest fir tree, saw his chance.  It was a rare one.  Nobody liked
eggs better than he did, or got fewer of them.  Like a flash he was
over from the fir branches into the pine ones, and up and into the nest.

"His sharp teeth went into the nearest egg, and he drank its contents
greedily--and cleverly, let me tell you, for it's not so easy to manage
without getting it all over your fur.  He was just going to begin on
another when there was a sharp hiss of wings just above him and a loud
_ca-ah_ of alarm.  The father bird was back and swooping down upon him.
He threw himself clear of the nest, fell to a lower branch, and raced
out to its tip to spring into his fir tree.  At this moment the furious
father struck him, knocking him clean off into the air.

"The air was now full of black wings and angry cries, as the crows from
neighboring nests flocked to the help of their fellow citizen.  But the
little red robber was brave and kept his head.  Spreading his legs wide
and flat, he made a sort of parachute of himself, and, instead of
falling like a stone, he glided down to another branch.  Those beating
wings and terrible jabbing beaks were all about him, but they got in
each other's way.  And he was a wonder at dodging, I can tell you, now
that he was among the bigger branches, and, though he got several nasty
thrusts, which covered his fine coat with blood, he gained his hole,
halfway down the tree, and whisked into it safely.

"Into this narrow retreat, of course, none of the crows dared to follow
him, knowing that they would there be at the mercy of his teeth.  But
they gathered in fierce excitement about the entrance, scolding the
audacious thief at the top of their voices, and threatening him with
every kind of vengeance when he should dare to come out.  And from time
to time one or another of the boldest would alight on the very edge of
the hole, cock his head, and peer in, to bounce away again instantly
with a startled squawk as the squirrel would jump up at him, chattering
with rage.

"In the midst of all this excitement the careless mother came hurrying
back.  She had heard the row, of course.  One could hear it all over
the parish.  Unobserved, she flew straight to the nest.  Her big, dark,
cunning eyes blazed for an instant, but she knew it was all her fault,
and she thought it best to make no fuss.  Hastily she dropped the empty
shell over the side of the nest, and then took her place dutifully on
the three remaining eggs.  In a few minutes the rest of the crows got
tired of scolding the squirrel in his hole and came _ca_-ing back to
the pine tree to talk the matter over.  When her mate, all in a fume,
hopped onto the edge of the nest, the mother looked up at him with eyes
of cold inquiry, as much as to say: 'Well, I'd like to know what all
this fuss is about.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself, acting that
way about a wretched squirrel!'  Of course, she may not have said all
that.  But she certainly gave all the other crows the impression that
there was nothing wrong about _her_ nest, and that they had better go
and look after their own.  Thereupon they all said sarcastic things to
their fellow citizen and left him indignantly.  He, poor fellow, found
it impossible to explain or justify himself, because his mate was
sitting on the eggs; so he flew off in a huff to try and find a
sparrow's nest to rob.  When he came back he had taken pains to forget
just how many eggs there had ever been in the nest.

"Oh, yes, I know there were still three.  Well, three or four days
later a boy came up from the farmhouse and climbed the pine tree, He
was not the kind of a boy that robs birds' nests, but he was making a
collection.  He wanted just one crow's egg, and he had a theory that
birds cannot count.  He liked crows--in fact, on that farm no one was
ever allowed to shoot crows or any other birds except the murderous
duck hawk, and he felt that the crows owed him _one_ egg, anyhow, in
return for the protection they enjoyed on his father's property.

"Now, you must not think he chose the pine tree because it was the
easiest to climb," went on Uncle Andy hurriedly, seeing in the Babe's
eyes that this point had to be cleared up at once.  "In fact, it was
the _hardest_ to climb.  Any one of the fir trees would have been
easier, and they all had crows' nests in them.  But the boy knew that
he could not climb any of them without getting his clothes all over
balsam, which would mean a lot of inconvenient explanations with his
mother.  So he went up the pine tree, of course, and spared his
mother's feelings.

"The crows displayed no sense of gratitude whatever.  He might have
eggs, of course, that boy, but not _their_ eggs!  They flapped around
him savagely, and made so much noise in his ears that he could not hear
himself think.  But he kept his big straw hat pulled down well over his
eyes, and paid no attention whatever to the indignant birds.  And
because he was so quiet and positive about it, not one of them _quite_
dared to actually touch him.  The mother bird hopped off the nest
sullenly just as he was about to put his hand on her.  He took one egg,
put it in his pocket, examined the nest with interest, and climbed down
again.  Just as he was nearing the ground he broke the egg.  This, of
course, made him feel not only sticky but somewhat embarrassed.  He saw
that he might have some difficulty in explaining that pocket to his
mother.  Even a great deal of balsam would have been better than _that_
egg.  But he comforted himself with the thought that he would never
have been able to blow it, anyhow, on account of its being so advanced.

"And that's why there were only two young crows in that particular nest.

"But they were an altogether unusual pair, these two.  In the first
place, receiving all the food and all the attention that were usually
divided among four or five, they had grown and feathered
extraordinarily fast, till now they were ready for flight, while their
fellows in the neighboring nests were still ragged and 'quilly'
looking.  In the second place, they had inherited from their eccentric
parents an altogether surprising amount of originality.  Their feathers
were beautifully firm and black and glossy, their beaks sharp and
polished; and in their full, dark, intelligent eyes there was an
impishness that even a crow might regard as especially impish."

"What's _impish_?" demanded the Babe.

"Goodness me!  Don't you know what _impish_ is?" exclaimed Uncle Andy.
He thought a moment, and then, finding it a little difficult to
explain, he added with convenient severity:

"If you will listen, you'll find out, perhaps."

"Well, the two grew so fast that, before their parents realized at all
what precocious youngsters they were, they had climbed out upon the
edge of the nest and begun to stretch their fine wings.  With hoarse
expostulations their father tried to persuade them back.  But their
mother, who was not so conservative, chuckled her approval and flew off
to hunt young mice for them.  Thus encouraged, they ignored their
father's prudent counsels, and hopped out, with elated squawks, upon
the branch.  Whereupon the father, somewhat huffed, flew up to the very
topmost branch of the tree and perched there, swaying in the breeze,
and trying to forget his family cares.  From this high post of
observation he presently caught sight of an eagle, winging his way up
from the swamp at the lower end of the valley.  With a sharp signal cry
for volunteers, he dashed off in pursuit.  He was joined by two other
crows who happened to be at leisure; and the three, quickly overtaking
the majestic voyager, began to load him with impertinence and abuse.
With their comparatively short but very broad wings the crows could
dodge so nimbly in the air that if was quite impossible for their great
enemy to catch them.  He made no attempt to do so.  Indignantly he
changed the direction of his flight, and began to soar, climbing
gradually into the blue in splendid, sweeping circles; while the crows,
croaking mockery and triumph, kept flapping above him and below,
darting at his eyes, and dashing with open beaks at the shining
whiteness of his crown.  They dared not come near enough to actually
touch him, but they succeeded in making themselves most unpleasant.
The eagle glared at them steadily with his fierce, black-and-yellow
eyes, but otherwise seemed to pay them no attention whatever.  Only he
kept mounting higher and higher, till at last his impish
tormentors--_impish_, I said--dared follow him no farther.  They came
fluttering down hurriedly to more congenial levels, and flew back to
the grove to boast of their 'great victory.'"

"My, but that eagle must have felt awfully ashamed!" exclaimed the Babe.

"The _next_ day," continued Uncle Andy, without noticing the
interruption, "the two old crows began to think it would soon be time
to teach this independent pair of youngsters to fly.  And they thought,
too, that they'd be able to manage it all by themselves, without any
help or advice from the rest of the flock.  While they were thinking
about it, in the next tree, for they were not a great pair to stay at
home, you know, one of the youngsters, the female, gave an impatient
squawk, spread her wings, and fell off her branch.  She thought it was
flying, you know, but at first she just fell, flapping her wings
wildly.  In two seconds, however, she seemed to get the hang of it,
more or less.  With a violent effort, she rose, gained the next tree,
alighted, panting, beside her parents and looked at them with a
superior air, as if she thought that they could never have accomplished
such a thing at her age.  That was perhaps true, of course, but it was
not for her to think so."

"Huh!  I should think not, indeed!" agreed the Babe severely.

"Well," continued Uncle Andy, now quite absorbed in his narrative, "the
other youngster, not to be outdone, went hopping up in great excitement
from branch to branch, till he was some ten feet above the rest of the
family.  Then, launching himself boldly, he went fluttering down to
them with no difficulty at all.  He was less impetuous and more
sagacious than his sister.

"After this the parents continued to feed their independent offspring
for a number of days, just because they had been accustomed to feed
their nestling for a certain length of time, till at last the
youngsters started off to forage on their own account, and the family,
as a family, broke up.  From habit, however, or from good will, the
youngsters kept coming back to roost on the branches beside the nest,
and remained on the most friendly, though easy-going, relations with
their father and mother.

"In every crow flock, large or small, there seems to be some kind of
discipline, some kind of obedience to the wise old leaders of the
flock.  But the two black imps of Pine-Top were apparently, for the
time at least, exempted from it.  They did about as they liked and were
a nuisance to everybody but their two selves, whom they admired
immensely.  Being too young for the old crows to take seriously, their
pranks were tolerated, or they would soon have been pecked and beaten
into better manners.  Too big and too grown-up for the young
crows--whom they visited in their nests and tormented till driven away
by the indignant parents--they had no associates but each other.  So
they followed their own whims; and the flock was philosophically
indifferent as to what might happen to them.

"You must not think, however, that they did not learn anything, these
two.  They were sharp.  They listened to what was being said around
them, and the crows, you know, are the greatest talkers ever; so they
soon knew the difference between a man with a gun and a man without
one.  They knew that an owl in the daytime is not the same thing as an
owl at night.  They gathered that a scarecrow is not as dangerous as it
looks.  And many other things that a crow needs to know and believe
they condescended to learn, because learning came easy to them.  But
common caution they did not learn, because it did not seem to them
either interesting or necessary.  So it was often just luck that got
them out of scrapes, though they always thought it was their own
cleverness.

"It was just lucky, of course, that day when they went exploring in the
patch of dark woods down in the valley, that the big brown owl did not
get one or the other of them.  He was asleep on a big dead branch as
brown as himself, and looking so like a part of it that they were just
going to alight, either upon him or within reach of his deadly clutch,
when a red squirrel saw them and shrieked at them.  Two great, round,
glaring orange eyes opened upon them from that brown prong of the
branch, so suddenly that they gave two startled squawks and nearly fell
to the ground.  How the red squirrel tittered, hating both the owl and
the crows.  But the imps, when they got over their start, were furious.
Flying over the owl's head, they kept screaming at the top of their
voices something which probably meant 'an owl! an owl! an owl!'; and
immediately every other crow within hearing took up the cry, till in
two minutes half the flock were gathered in the patch of woods.  They
swarmed screaming about the owl's head, striking at him with their
sharp beaks and strong black wings, but always too wary to come quite
within his reach.  The great night prowler knew that in the daylight he
could not catch them--that, indeed, if he did succeed in catching one
in his claws the others would throw caution to the winds and all be
down upon him at once.  He sat there, straight and stiff, for a while,
snapping his terrible beak and hissing at them like an angry cat.  Till
at last, realizing that there was no more chance of a peaceful sleep
for him there, he spread his huge, downy wings and sailed off smoothly
to seek some more secluded neighborhood.  The whole flock pursued him,
with their tormenting and abuse, for perhaps a couple of miles; and
then, at some signal from their leaders, dropped the chase suddenly and
turned their attention to what looked like a sort of game of tag, in a
wide, open pasture where no enemy could steal upon them unawares.  The
imps felt themselves great heroes, but if it had not been for that red
squirrel, the owl, sleepy though he was, would certainly have got one
of them."

The Babe wanted to ask whether the squirrel had warned them out of
friendliness or just out of dislike to the owl, but before he could
frame his question quite satisfactorily, or get out anything more than
a hasty "But why--?"  Uncle Andy had gone on with an emphasis which
discouraged interruption.

"It was lucky for them, too, that no guns were fired on the big farm
below the grove--the crows were there believed to earn the corn they
stole by the grubs and cutworms and mice they killed.  That was _very_
lucky for the two imps, for they were forever hanging about the
farmyard and the big locust trees that ran along the foot of the
garden.  The farmer himself and his hired hands paid no attention to
them, but the boy, the one who had prevented there being three imps
instead of two, he was tremendously interested.  At first they were shy
of him, because, perhaps, they felt him watching them out of the
corners of his keen blue eyes.  But at last they decided he was no more
dangerous than the rest, and made sarcastic remarks about him in a
language which he couldn't understand.

"There was always food to be picked up around the farmyard when the men
were absent in the fields, the womenfolk busy in the kitchen, and the
boy somewhere out of sight.  And it was food doubly sweet because it
had to be stolen from the fussy hens or the ridiculous ducks or the
stupid, complacent pigeons.  Then there was always something
interesting to be done.  It was fun to bully the pigeons and to give
sly, savage jabs to the half-grown chicks.  It was delightful to steal
the bright tops of tin tomato cans--they _thought_ they were stealing
them, of course, because they could not imagine such fascinating things
being thrown away, even by those fool men--to snatch them hurriedly,
fly off with them to the tall green pine-top, and hide them in their
old nest till they got it looking quite like a rubbish dump, and good
pasture for a goat.  And most of all, perhaps, was it fun to tease the
lazy old kitchen cat, till her tail would get as big as a bottle brush
with helpless indignation."

"The _cat_?" exclaimed the Babe.  "Why, weren't they afraid of _her_?"

"Wait and see!" remarked Uncle Andy simply, with no apologies whatever
to the Prime Minister.  "Well, as I was about to say, their method was
simple and effective.  They would wait till they found the cat lying
along the narrow top of the rail fence, sunning herself.  It was her
favorite place, though it can hardly have been comfortable, it was so
narrow.  The He imp would alight on the rail, about ten feet in front
of her, and pretend to be very sick, squawking feebly and drooping his
black wings with a struggling flutter, as if it was all he could do to
keep his perch.  The cat, her narrow eyes opening very wide, would
start to creep up to him.  The She imp would then alight on the rail
behind her and nip her sharply by the tail, and go hopping clumsily off
down the rail.  The cat would wheel with an angry _pfiff-ff_, and start
after this new quarry.  Whereupon the He imp would again nip her tail.
This would be repeated several times before the cat would realize that
she was being made a fool of.  Then she would bounce down from the
fence and race off to the kitchen in a towering rage, and the impudent
youngsters would fly up into the nearest tree top and _ca_ about it
delightedly.

"Then there was the scarecrow, in the middle of the big strawberry
patch down at the foot of the huge garden.  It did not scare these two
young rascals, not in the least.  It was an excellently made scarecrow,
and did strike terror to the heart of many of the smaller birds.  But
its hat was packed with straw, and the imps found it was a pleasant
game pulling the straws out through a couple of holes in the crown, and
strewing them over the strawberry bed.  Incidentally, they liked
strawberries, and ate a good many of them as sauce to their ordinary
diet of grubs and mice and chicken feed.  And it was this weakness of
theirs for strawberries that led to their misunderstanding with the
Boy, and then with the big rat that lived under the tool shed.

"That strawberry patch was one of the things that the Boy took a
particular interest in.  When he saw that the imps also took such an
interest in it, eating the berries instead of the grubs, he began to
get annoyed.  From his window, which overlooked the garden, he had seen
what liberties the imps took with the scarecrow, so he realized there
was no help for him in scarecrows.  But _something_ must be done, that
he vowed, and done at once, or his strawberries were going to be mighty
scarce.  He didn't want to do any real harm to even such a troublesome
pair of birds as the imps, but he was determined to give them a lesson
that might teach them some respect, not only for strawberry patches,
but even for scarecrows.

"On the crown of the scarecrow's old hat, which he had observed to be a
favorite perch of the imps, he arranged a noose of light cord.  From
the noose he ran the cord down the scarecrow's single leg (scarecrows,
you know, have usually only one leg), across to the hedge, along the
hedge to the house, and up and into his room.  He fixed it so it ran
without a hitch.  He was very proud of it altogether.  Much pleased
with himself, he got a book and a couple of apples, and seated himself
at his window to wait for his chance.

"As it happened, however, the imps were just then away in the meadow,
hunting mice.  For a whole hour the Boy saw no sign of them.  Then,
being called away to go on an errand into the village, he tied the end
of the cord to his bedpost, and left it with a word of advice to do
what it could in his absence.

"Well, it did!  For a mere bit of string, all by itself, it didn't do
badly.  First the old brown rat, with his fierce little eyes and
pointed, whiskered nose, came out from under the toolhouse and began
exploring the strawberry patch.  He didn't think much of strawberries
in themselves, but he was apt to find fat grubs and beetles and sleepy
June bugs under the clustering leaves.  He came upon the string,
stretched taut.  He was just about to bite it through and try to carry
it off to his nest when it occurred to him it might be a trap.  He
turned away discreetly, and snapped up a plump June bug.

"Then the imps came sailing along.  The He imp, with a loud _ca-ah_,
perched in the top of a locust and reconnoitred the situation.  The She
imp alighted on the head of the scarecrow, cocked her head to one side,
and peered down upon the rat with a wicked and insulting eye.
'_Cr-r-r-r_,' she said sarcastically.  But, as the rat paid no
attention to her, she hopped up and down on her toes, half-lifting her
wings in the effort to attract his eye.  She hated to be ignored.  But
still the rat ignored her, though he saw her perfectly well and would
have loved to eat her.  At last, in her excitement, she caught sight of
the cord running over the edge of the scarecrow's hat.  Snatching it up
in her beak, she gave it an energetic and inquiring tug.  She learned
something interesting about it at once.  It grabbed her by one leg.

"Startled into a panic, as all wild things are at the least suggestion
of restraint, she squawked and flapped into the air.  The noose
tightened rebukingly and pulled her up short.

"For one astounded moment she settled back onto the scarecrow's head,
frightened into stillness.  Then she tweaked savagely at the cord on
her leg, but, of course, could do nothing with it.  As far as knots
were concerned, her education had been utterly neglected.  At last she
sprang once more into the air, determined to have nothing more to do
with the treacherous scarecrow who had stuck that thing on her leg.

"Of course, she didn't fly far--just about six feet--and she was again
brought up with a jerk.  And now she went quite wild.  Squawking and
flapping and whirling round and round, she made an amazing exhibition
of herself.  Her brother, in the top of the locust, stared down upon
her in astonished disapproval.  And the brown rat, interested at last,
came creeping stealthily to the scarecrow's foot and looked up at her
performance with cruel, glinting eyes.

"Now, as you may well imagine, this performance was something which
even the imp, strong as she was, could not keep up very long.  In about
a minute she had to stop and take breath.  She was going to alight on
the ground, when she remembered the rat.  Yes, there he was.  So she
had to take refuge once more on the hated and treacherous scarecrow.
But no sooner had she done so, alighting with open beak and
half-spread, quivering wings, than the rat came darting up the leg of
the scarecrow's ragged trousers and pounced at her.  She _just_
escaped, and that was all, leaping into the air with a squawk of terror
and flapping there violently at the end of those six feet of free cord.

"It was a horrifying position for her, let me tell you--"

"I guess _so_!" muttered the Babe in spite of himself, wagging his head
sympathetically.  He did not like rats.

"She was too frightened to save her strength, of course, and so kept
flapping with all her might, as if she thought to fly away with
scarecrow and all.  The rat, however, was impatient.  He clutched at
the cord with his handlike claws and began trying to pull the imp down
to him.  At first he couldn't make much out of it, but as the imp
weakened with her frantic efforts the cord began to shorten.  Just
about now the He imp, who had come down from the locust top and
fluttered over the scene in pained curiosity, realized what was
happening.  He was game, all right, however bumptious and
self-satisfied.  He set up a tremendous _ca-a-a-ing_, as a signal for
all the crows within hearing to come to the rescue, and then made a
sudden, savage side swoop at the foe.

"Taken thoroughly by surprise, the rat was toppled from his unsteady
perch and fell among the strawberries.  His head ringing from the
stroke of that sturdy black wing, his plump flank smarting and bleeding
from a fierce jab of that pointed beak of the imp's, he squeaked with
rage and clambered up again to the battle.  Mr. Rat, you know, is no
coward and no quitter.

"And now he was more dangerous, because he was ready.  He sat warily on
his haunches, squeaking angrily, and turning his sharp head from side
to side as he followed every swoop and rush of the He imp, snapping so
dangerously that the latter did not dare come quite close enough to
deliver another really effective blow.  At the same time, being very
clever indeed, the rat kept tugging, tugging, tugging at the cord.  And
the She imp, being quite gone out of her mind with the terror of that
clutch on her leg, kept flapping crazily at the end of the cord instead
of turning to, like a sensible crow, and helping her brother in the
fight.

"As she grew weaker and weaker in her struggles, the cunning rat drew
her lower and lower, till at last she seemed fairly within his reach.
He lifted himself on his hindquarters to snap his long teeth into her
thigh and spring to the ground with her, where he would have her
completely at his mercy.  But as he rose the He imp, at sight of his
sister's deadly peril, lost all sense of caution, and struck again with
all his strength of beak and wing.  And once more the rat, fairly
bursting with rage, was swept to the ground.

"He was back to the attack again in a moment, and now more dangerous
than ever.  And at the same time the She imp, utterly worn out at last
by her panic terror and her foolish violence, sank shuddering down upon
her perch.  Her brother struck the rat again frantically when the
latter was halfway up the scarecrow's leg, but this time failed to
dislodge him.  And it looked as if the poor She imp would never again
steal a strawberry or worry a pigeon.  But at this moment the Boy
appeared in the garden.  He came running up noiselessly, anxious to see
all that was happening.  But the rat heard him.  The rat had no use for
the Boy whatever.  He knew that the whole human race was his enemy.  He
dropped from the scarecrow's trouser leg and scurried off to his hole
beneath the toolhouse.  The Boy, his face a mixture of amusement and
concern, picked up the captive without noticing her feeble pecks, undid
the noose from her leg, and carried her over the hedge to rest and
recover herself.

"'Now,' said he, 'you little imp of Satan, maybe you'll not come
stealing any more of my strawberries or pulling any more straw out of
my poor scarecrow's head!'

"And she never did!" concluded Uncle Andy, rising and stretching his
legs.  "Those two were not _reformed_, you may be sure.  But they kept
clear, after that, of the Boy's strawberry patch, and of _all
scarecrows_.  It's time we were getting back to camp for supper, or
Bill will be feeling sour."

"But you haven't told me," protested the Babe, who had a most tenacious
memory, "why those crows all flew away out of the pine-top so suddenly,
as if they had just remembered something.  And you haven't told me why
you'd rather be a humming-bird than a crow.  And you haven't--"

But Uncle Andy stopped him.

"If you think I'm going to tell you all I know," said he, "you're
mistaken.  If I did, you'd know as much as I do, and it wouldn't be any
fun.  Some day you'll be glad I've left something for you to find out
for yourself."

YOUNG GRUMPY AND THE ONE-EYED GANDER

"My gracious!  What's that?" cried the Babe, and nearly jumped out of his
boots.  A gray thing had come right at him, with an ugly, scurrying rush.
The bushes and bracken being thick, he had not got a very clear view of
it--and he did not stop to try for a better one.  In two seconds he was
back at Uncle Andy's side, where the latter sat smoking on his favorite
log by the water.

The Babe's eyes were very wide.  He looked a bit startled.

"It ran _straight_ at me!" he declared.  "What could it have been?"

"A bear, I suppose!" said Uncle Andy sarcastically.

"Of course not," answered the Babe in an injured voice.  "If it had been
a bear, I'd have been _frightened_."

"Oh!" said Uncle Andy.  "I see.  Well, what was it like?  Seems to me you
didn't take much time to look at it, even if you weren't frightened."

"I _did_ look," protested the Babe, glancing again, a little nervously,
at the bushes.  "It was like--like a tre-_mend_ous big fat guinea pig,
with a fat tail and all kind of rusty gray."

"Now, that's not at all bad, considering you were in something of a
hurry," said Uncle Andy approvingly.  "That's really a very good
description of a woodchuck.  No one could possibly mistake it for a
lobster or a lion."

"Of course, I couldn't see it very _plain_," added the Babe hastily,
wondering if Uncle Andy was laughing at him.  "But why did it run at me
that way?"

"You see," said Uncle Andy seriously, repenting of his mockery, "the
woodchuck is a queer, bad-tempered chap, with more pluck than sense
sometimes.  Once in a while he would run at anything that was new and
strange to him, no matter how big it was, just to see if he couldn't
frighten it."

"Would he run at you or Bill that way?" demanded the Babe in a voice of
awe at the very thought of such temerity.

"Oh, he has seen lots of _men_," replied Uncle Andy.  "We're nothing new
to him.  But most likely he had never seen a small boy before, and he did
not know what kind of an animal it was.  The very fact that he did not
know made him angry--he's sometimes so quick-tempered, you know!"

"I'm glad he didn't frighten me--so _very_ much!" murmured the Babe,
beginning to forget the exact degree of his alarm.

"I noticed you got out of his way pretty smart!" said Uncle Andy, eyeing
him from under shaggy brows.  "But perhaps that was just because you were
in a hurry to tell me about it!"

"No-o!" answered the Babe, hesitating but truthful.  "I thought perhaps
he was going to bite my legs, and I didn't want him to."

"That seems reasonable enough," agreed Uncle Andy heartily.  "No sensible
person wants a fool woodchuck biting his legs."

"But would he _really_ have bitten me?" asked the Babe, beginning to
think that perhaps he ought to go back and find the presumptuous little
animal and kick him.

"As I think I've already said, you never can tell exactly what a
woodchuck is going to do," replied Uncle Andy.  "You know that old rhyme
about him:

  "'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,
  If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
  He'd chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could
  If a woodchuck could chuck wood.'

"Now that goes to show what uncertainty people have about him.  And it's
no more than right.  For instance, I was traveling through a wild part of
New Brunswick once in a big red automobile, when, coming suddenly around
a turn, we saw just ahead of us two old woodchucks sitting up on their
fat haunches by the side of the road.  I was beside the chauffeur, and
could see just what happened.  How those woodchucks' eyes stuck out!  It
was not more than three seconds before we were right up to them.  Then
one of the two, frightened to death, fairly turned a back somersault into
the bushes.  But the other was a hero.  Perhaps he thought he was St.
George and the automobile a dragon.  Anyhow, he did all a hero could.  He
jumped straight on to the front wheel and bit wildly at the tire.  We
stopped so short that we almost went out on our heads--but too late!  The
wheel had gone clean over him.  We felt so sorry that we stopped and dug
a hole by the roadside and gave the flattened little hero a very
distinguished burial."

"Oh, but he must have been crazy!" exclaimed the Babe, rubbing his leg
thoughtfully and congratulating himself that he had not lingered to study
the being which had rushed at him in the underbrush.

"Perhaps," said Uncle Andy dryly.  "If I remember rightly, that's just
what has been said of lots of heroes before now."

He tapped his pipe on the log beside him to knock out the ashes, and
proceeded thoughtfully to fill it up again.  This second filling the Babe
had learned to regard as a very hopeful sign.  It usually meant that
Uncle Andy was in the vein.  Seating himself on the grass directly in
front of his uncle, the Babe clasped his arms around his bare little
brown, mosquito-bitten knees, and stared upward hopefully with grave,
round eyes, as blue as the bluebells nodding beside him.

"Speaking of woodchucks," began Uncle Andy presently, "I've known a lot
of them in my time, and I've almost always found them interesting.  Like
some people we know, they're sometimes most amusing when they are most
serious."

"_Amusing_!" exclaimed the Babe, with a world of meaning in his voice.
That was the last word he expected to apply to such a bad-tempered little
beast.

But his uncle paid no heed to the interruption.

"There was 'Young Grumpy,' now," he continued musingly.  "As sober-minded
a woodchuck as ever burrowed a bank.  From his earliest days he took life
seriously, and never seemed to think it worth his while to play as the
other wild youngsters do.  Yet in spite of himself he was sometimes quite
amusing.

"He had the good fortune to be born in the back pasture of Anderson's
Farm.  That was where the Boy lived, you know, and where no one was
allowed to shoot the crows.  Being a place where no one did any more
killing than was absolutely necessary, it was rather lucky for any of the
Babes of the Wild to be born there--except weasels, of course."

"Why not for weasels?" demanded the Babe.

"Well, now, you might know that without my having to tell you," replied
Uncle Andy.  "The weasels are such merciless and murderous little killers
themselves, killing just for the fun of it when they are already too full
to eat what they have killed, that both Mr. Anderson and the Boy had no
sympathy for them, and thought them better out of the way.  I don't want
to be too hard, even on a weasel; but I'm bound to say that most of the
wild creatures feel much the same way about that blood-thirsty little
pirate."

"I should think so!" agreed the Babe indignantly, resolving to devote his
future largely to the extermination of weasels, and hoping thus to win
the confidence and gratitude of the kindred of the wild.

"Young Grumpy's home life," continued Uncle Andy, "with his father and
mother and four brothers and sisters was not a pampered one.  There are
few wild parents less given to spoiling their young than a pair of
grumbling old woodchucks.  The father, who spent most of his time
sleeping, rolled up in a ball at the bottom of the burrow, paid them no
attention except to nip at them crossly when they tumbled over him.  They
were always relieved when he went off, three or four times a day, down
into the neighboring clover field to make his meals.  The little ones did
not see what he was good for, anyhow, till one morning, when the
black-and-yellow dog from the next farm happened along.  The youngsters,
with their mother, were basking in the sun just outside the front door.
As the dog sprang at them they all fairly fell, head over heels, back
into the burrow.  The dog, immensely disappointed, set to work
frantically to dig them out.  He felt sure that young woodchuck would be
very good to eat.

"It was then that Old Grumpy showed what he was made of.  Thrusting his
family rudely aside, he scurried up the burrow to the door, where the dog
was making the earth fly at a most alarming rate.  Without a moment's
hesitation he sank his long, cutting teeth into the rash intruder's nose
and held on.

"The dog yelped and choked, and tried to back out of the hole in a hurry.
But it was no use.  The old woodchuck had a solid grip and was pulling
with all his might in the other direction.  Panic-stricken and half
smothered by the dry earth, the dog dug in his hind claws, bent his back
like a bow, and pulled for all he was worth, yelling till you might have
thought there were half a dozen dogs in that hole.  At last, after
perhaps three or four minutes--which seemed to the dog much longer--the
old woodchuck decided to leave go.  You see, he didn't really want that
dog, or even that dog's nose, in the burrow.  So he opened his jaws
suddenly.  At that the dog went right over backward, all four legs in the
air, like a wooden dog.  But the next instant he was on his feet again,
and tearing away like mad down the pasture, ki-yi-ing like a whipped
puppy, although he was a grown-up dog and ought to have been ashamed of
himself to make such a noise.  And never after that, they tell me, could
he be persuaded under any circumstances to go within fifteen feet of
anything that looked like a woodchuck hole."

"I'm not one bit sorry for him," muttered the Babe in spite of himself.
"He had no business there at all."

"The mother of the woodchuck family," went on Uncle Andy, "was not so
cross as the father, but she was very careless.  She would sit upon her
fat haunches in the door of the burrow while the babies were nibbling
around outside, pretending to keep an eye on them.  But half the time she
would be sound asleep, with her head dropped straight down on her
stomach, between her little black paws.  One day, as she was dozing thus
comfortably, a marsh hawk came flapping low overhead, and pounced on one
of the youngsters before it had time to more than squeak.  At the sound
of that despairing squeak, to be sure, she woke up and made a savage rush
at the enemy.  But the wary bird was already in the air, with the prize
drooping from his talons.  And the mother could do nothing but sit up and
chatter after him abusively as he sailed away to his nest.

"You see, the mother was brave enough, as I said before, but very
careless.  She was different from the ordinary run of woodchucks, in that
she had only three feet.  She had lost her left hind paw."

"Was that because she was so careless?" asked the Babe.

Uncle Andy looked at him suspiciously.  Like so many other story-tellers,
he preferred to make all the jokes himself.  He was suspicious of other
people's jokes.  But the Babe's round, attentive eyes were as innocent as
the sky.

"No," said he gravely; "_that_ was something she could not help.  It was
an accident.  It has nothing to do with Young Grumpy, but since you've
asked me about it I had better tell you at once and save interruptions.

"You see it was this way.  Before she came to live on the Anderson Farm
she used to have a burrow over on the other side of the Ridge, where the
people went in for a good deal of trapping and snaring.  One day someone
set a steel trap just in front of her burrow.  Of course she put her foot
into it at the first chance.  It was terrible.  You know the grip of
those steel jaws, for I've seen you trying to open them.  She was game,
however--they're always game, these woodchucks.  Instead of squealing and
hopping about and losing her wits and using up her strength, she just
popped back into her hole and dragged the trap in with her as far as it
would go.  That was not very far, of course, because the man who set it
had chained it to a stump outside.  But she thought it better, in such a
trouble, to be out of range of unsympathetic eyes.  There in the hole she
tugged and wrenched at the cruel biting thing till even her obstinacy had
to acknowledge that it was impossible to pull herself free.  Then she
tried blocking up the hole behind her, thinking perhaps that the trap, on
finding itself thus imprisoned in the burrow, would get frightened and
let go its hold.  Disappointed in this hope, she decided to adopt heroic
measures.  With magnificent nerve she calmly set to work and _gnawed off_
the foot which had been so idiotic as to get itself caught.  She would
have nothing more to do with the fool thing.  She just left it there in
the trap, with her compliments, for the man--a poor little, crumpled,
black-skinned paw, with a fringe of short brownish fur about the wrist,
like a fur-lined gauntlet."

The Babe shuddered, but heroically refrained from interrupting.

"Of course the stump soon healed up," continued Uncle Andy, "but she
always found the absence of that paw most inconvenient, especially when
she was digging burrows.  She used to find herself digging them on the
bias, and coming out where she did not at all expect to.

"But to return to Young Grumpy.  While he was yet very young his
three-legged mother, who had seen him and his brothers and sisters eating
grass quite comfortably, decided that they were big enough to look out
for themselves.  She refused to nurse them any more.  Then she turned
them all out of the burrow.  When they came presently scurrying back
again, hoping it was all an unhappy joke, she nipped them most
unfeelingly.  Their father snored.  There was no help in that quarter.
They scurried dejectedly forth again.

"Outside, in the short pasture grass and scattered ox-eye daisies, they
looked at each other suspiciously, and each felt that somehow it was the
other fellow's fault.  Aggrieved and miserable, they went rambling off,
each his own way, to face alone what Fate might have in store for him.
And Young Grumpy, looking up from a melancholy but consoling feast which
he was making on a mushroom, found himself alone in the world.

"He didn't care a fig.  You see, he was so grumpy.  Not knowing where to
go, he strolled up the hill and into the fir woods.  Here he came upon a
very old, moth-eaten, feeble-looking woodchuck, who was very busy in a
half-hearted way digging himself a hole.  Suddenly he stopped.  Young
Grumpy did not think it was any sort of a hole for a woodchuck, but the
old fellow seemed satisfied with it.  He curled himself up in it, almost
in plain view, and went straight to sleep.  Young Grumpy strolled off
scornfully.  When he came back that way, a few hours later, he found the
old woodchuck still in exactly the same position as before.  He never
stirred or scolded even when Young Grumpy came up and squeaked quite
close to his ear.  Seized suddenly with a vague uneasiness, Young Grumpy
nosed at him curiously.  The old woodchuck's body was chill and rigid.
It created a most unpleasant impression, and, not knowing why he did so,
Young Grumpy hurried forth from the dark wood and down into the sunlit
pasture to which he was accustomed.

"For some days he wandered about the pasture, sleeping under stumps and
in mossy hollows, and fortunately escaping, by reason of his light,
rusty-gray color, the eyes of passing hawks.  At last chance, or his nose
for good living, led him down to the clover meadow adjoining Anderson's
barnyard.

"It was here that his adventures may be said to have begun.

"Just as he was happily filling himself with clover, a white dog, with
short-cropped ears standing up stiffly, came by and stopped to look at
him with bright, interested eyes.  Young Grumpy, though the stranger was
big enough to take him in two mouthfuls, felt not frightened but annoyed.
He gave a chuckling squeak of defiance and rushed straight at the dog.

"Now, this was the Boy's bull terrier, Major, and he had been severely
trained to let small, helpless creatures alone.  He had got it into his
head that all such creatures were the Boy's property, and so to be
guarded and respected.  He was afraid lest he might hurt this cross
little animal, and get into trouble with the Boy.  So he kept jumping out
of the way, stiff-leggedly, as if very much amused, and at the same time
he kept barking, as if to call the Boy to come and see.  Young Grumpy,
feeling very big, followed him up with short, threatening rushes, till he
found himself just at the open gate leading into the farmyard.

"Parading solemnly before the gate was a big gray gander with only one
eye.  That one eye, extra keen and fierce, caught sight of Young Grumpy,
and probably mistook him for an immense rat, thief of eggs and murderer
of goslings.  With a harsh hiss and neck outstretched till it was like a
snake, the great bird darted at him.

"Young Grumpy hesitated.  After the manner of his kind, he sat upon his
haunches to hesitate.  The gander seemed to him very queer, and perhaps
dangerous.

"At this critical moment the white dog interfered.  In his eyes Young
Grumpy belonged to the Boy, and was therefore valuable property.  He ran
at the gander.  The gander, recognizing his authority, withdrew, haughty
and protesting.  Young Grumpy followed with a triumphant rush, and, of
course, took all the credit to himself.

"This led him into the farmyard.  Here he promptly forgot both the dog
and the gander.  It was such a strange place, and full of such strange
smells.  He was about to turn back into the more familiar clover when, as
luck would have it, he stumbled upon a half-eaten carrot which had been
dropped by one of the horses.  How good it smelled!  And then, how good
it tasted!  Oh, no! the place where such things were to be found was not
a place for him to leave in a hurry!

"As he was feasting greedily on the carrot the Boy appeared, with the
white dog at his heels.  He did not look nearly so terrible as the
gander.  So, angry at being disturbed, and thinking he had come for the
carrot, Young Grumpy ran at him at once.

"But the Boy did not run away.  Surprised at his courage, Young Grumpy
stopped short, at a distance of two or three feet from the Boy's stout
shoes, sat upon his haunches with his little skinny black hands over his
chest, and began to gurgle and squeak harsh threats.  The Boy laughed,
and stretched out a hand to touch him.  Young Grumpy snapped so savagely,
however, that the Boy snatched back his hand and stood observing him with
amused interest, waving off the white dog lest the latter should
interrupt.  Young Grumpy went on blustering with his muffled squeaks for
perhaps a minute.  Then, seeing that the Boy was neither going to run
away nor fight, he dropped on all fours indifferently and returned to his
carrot.

"There was nothing pleased the Boy better than seeing the harmless wild
creatures get familiar about the place.  He went now and fetched a saucer
of milk from the dairy, and set it down beside Young Grumpy, who scolded
at him, but refused to budge an inch.  The yellow cat--an amiable soul,
too well fed to hunt even mice with any enthusiasm--followed the Boy,
with an interested eye on the saucer.  At sight of Young Grumpy her back
went up, her tail grew big as a bottle, and she spat disapprovingly.  As
the stranger paid her no attention, however, she sidled cautiously up to
the milk and began to lap it.

"The sound of her lapping caught Young Grumpy's attention.  It was a
seductive sound.  Leaving the remains of his carrot, he came boldly up to
the saucer.  The yellow cat flattened back her ears, growled, and stood
her ground till he was within a foot of her.  Then, with an angry
'_pf-f-f_' she turned tail and fled.  The stranger was so calmly sure of
himself that she concluded he must be some new kind of skunk--and her
respect for all skunks was something tremendous.

"Having finished the milk and the carrot, Young Grumpy felt a pressing
need of sleep.  Turning his back on the Boy and the dog as if they were
not worth noticing, he ambled off along the garden fence, looking for a
convenient hole.  The one-eyed gander, who had been watching him with
disfavor from the distance, saw that he was now no longer under the
protection of the white dog, and came stalking up from the other end of
the yard to have it out with him--thief of eggs and murderer of goslings
as the bird mistook him to be!  But Young Grumpy, having found a
cool-looking hole under the fence, had whisked into it and vanished.

"As matters stood now, Young Grumpy felt himself quite master of the
situation.  His heartless mother was forgotten.  Farmyard, clover-field,
and cool green garden were all his.  Had he not routed all presumptuous
enemies but the Boy?  And the latter seemed very harmless.  But a few
days the garden occupied all his attention--when he was not busy
enlarging and deepening his hole under the fence and digging a second
entrance to it.  He noticed that the Boy had a foolish habit of standing
and watching him; but to this he had no serious objection, the more so as
he found that the Boy's presence was often accompanied by a saucer of
milk.

"It was not till after several days of garden life that, lured by the
memory of the carrot, he again visited the barnyard.  At first it seemed
to be quite deserted.  And there was no sign of a carrot anywhere.  Then
he caught sight of the yellow cat, and scurried toward her, thinking
perhaps it was her fault there were no carrots.  She fluffed her tail,
gave a yowl of indignation, and raced into the barn.  Neither the white
dog, nor the Boy, nor the one-eyed gander was anywhere in sight.

"Young Grumpy decided that it was a poor place, the barnyard.  He was on
the point of turning back to the green abundance of the garden, when a
curious clucking sound attracted his attention.  At the other side of the
yard he saw a red hen in a coop.  A lot of very young chickens, little
yellow balls of down, were running about outside the coop.  Young Grumpy
strolled over.  The chickens did not concern him in the least.  He didn't
know what they were, and, as no flesh was in his eyes good to eat, he
didn't care.  But he hoped they might have such a thing as a carrot about
them."

"Oh-h-h!  What would _they_ have a carrot for?" protested the Babe.

Uncle Andy scorned to notice this remark.  "When Young Grumpy approached
the coop," he continued, "the red hen squawked frantically, and the
chickens all ran in under her wings.  Young Grumpy eyed her with
curiosity for a moment, as she screamed at him with open beak and ruffled
up all her feathers.  But in the coop was a big slice of turnip, at which
she had been pecking.  He knew at once this would be good, perhaps as
good as a carrot, and he flattened himself against the bars trying to get
in at it.

"The next moment he got a great surprise.  The red hen hurled herself at
him with such violence that, although the bars protected him, he was
almost knocked over.  He received a smart jab from her beak, and her
bristling feathers came through the bars in a fashion that rather took
away his breath.  He was furious.  Again and again he strove to force his
way in, now on one side, now on the other.  But always that fiery bunch
of beak and claw and feathers seemed to burst in his face.  Had it not
been for the bars, indeed, the red hen would have given him an awful
mauling.  But this, of course, he was too self-confident to suspect.
With characteristic obstinacy, he kept up the struggle for fully five
minutes, while the terrified chickens filled the air with their pipings
and the hen screamed herself hoarse.  Then, feeling a little sore, to be
sure, but very certain that he had impressed the hen, he strolled off to
look for some delicacy less inaccessible than that piece of turnip.

"At this point the one-eyed gander came waddling up from the goose pond.
He was lonely and bad-tempered, for his two wives had been killed by a
fox that spring, and the Boy had not yet found him a new mate.  Young
Grumpy looked at the big gray bird and recalled the little unpleasantness
of their previous encounter.

"'Oh, ho!' said he to himself--if woodchucks ever _do_ talk to
themselves--'I'll just give that ugly chap beans, like I did the other
day.'  And he went scurrying across the yard to see about it.

"To his surprise, the gander paid him no attention whatever.  You see, he
was on the side of the gander's blind eye.

"Now, Young Grumpy was so puzzled by this indifference that, instead of
rushing right in and biting the haughty bird, he sat up on his haunches
at a distance of some five or six feet and began to squeak his defiance.
The gander turned his head.  Straightway he opened his long yellow bill,
gave vent to a hiss like the steam from an escape pipe, stuck out his
snaky neck close to the ground, lifted his broad gray-and-white wings,
and charged.

"Before Young Grumpy had time even to wonder if he had been imprudent or
not, the hard elbow of one of those wings caught him a blow on the ear
and knocked him head over heels.  At the same time it swept him to one
side, and the gander rushed on straight over the spot where he had been
sitting.

"Young Grumpy picked himself up, startled and shaken.  The thing had been
so unexpected.  He would have rather liked to run away.  But he was too
angry and too obstinate.  He just sat up on his haunches again, intending
to make another and more successful attack as soon as his head stopped
buzzing.

"The gander, meanwhile, was surprised also.  He could not understand how
his enemy had got out of the way so quickly.  He stared around, and then,
turning his one eye skyward, as if he thought Young Grumpy might have
gone that way, he trumpeted a loud _honka-honka-honk--kah_.

"For some reason this strange cry broke Young Grumpy's nerve.  He
scuttled for his hole his jet-black heels kicking up the straws behind
him.  As soon as he began to run, of course, the gander saw him and swept
after him with a ferocious hissing.  But Young Grumpy had got the start.
He dived into his hole just as the gander brought up against the fence.

"Now, the moment he found himself inside his burrow, all Young Grumpy's
courage returned.  He wheeled and stuck his head out again, as much as to
say, 'Now come on, if you dare!"

"The gander came on promptly--so promptly, in fact, that the lightning
stroke of his heavy bill knocked Young Grumpy far back into the hole
again.

"In a great rage, the gander darted his head into the hole.  Chattering
with indignation, Young Grumpy set his long teeth into that intruding
bill, and tried to pull it further in.  The gander, much taken aback at
this turn of affairs, tried to pull it out again.  For perhaps half a
minute it was a very good tug-of-war.  Then the superior weight and
strength of the great bird, with all the advantage of his beating wings,
suddenly triumphed, and Young Grumpy, too pig-headed to let go his hold,
was jerked forth once more into the open.

"The next moment another blow from one of those mighty wing elbows all
but stunned him, and his grip relaxed.  He made a groping rush for the
burrow, but in that same instant the gander's great bill seized him by
the back of the neck and lifted him high into the air.

"This was very near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed
gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as
dead as a last year's June bug.  But happily the Boy and the white dog
came running up in the nick of time.  The gander dropped his victim and
stalked off haughtily.  And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around
in a confused way, crawled back into his hole.

"The white dog opened his mouth from ear to ear, and looked up at the Boy
with an unmistakable grin.  The Boy, half laughing, half sympathetic,
went and peered into the hole.

"'I guess you'd better keep out of Old Wall-Eye's way after this!' said
he.

"And Young Grumpy did.  Whenever the one-eyed gander was in the yard,
then Young Grumpy stayed in the garden."

CHAPTER IV

LITTLE SWORD AND THE INKMAKER

Out across the shining expanse of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by
any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue butterfly, as blue as
if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had
fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake.  It was a
foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from shore, and over
that lonely, treacherous element which has such scant mercy for
butterflies.  The turquoise wings dipped and rose, sometimes coming so
close to the water that the Babe caught his breath, thinking the frail
voyager's eyes were unable to distinguish between the crystal purity of
the water and that of the air.  At last a wing tip, or more likely the
tip of the velvet tail, brushed the surface.  It was only the lightest
touch; and instantly, suddenly, as if startled by the chill contact,
the azure flutterer rose again.  In the same instant the water swirled
heavily beneath her, a little sucking whirlpool appeared shattering the
mirror, and circular ripples began to widen quickly and smoothly from
the break.

"That was a big fellow!" exclaimed Uncle Andy.  But the Babe said
nothing, being too intent upon the aerial voyager's career.

For two or three moments the flake of sky fluttered higher.  Then, as
the ripples smoothed themselves out, she seemed to forget, and began to
descend again as if lured downward by her own dainty reflection.  Yet
she had not quite forgotten, for now she only came within six or seven
inches of the traitorous surface.  Now her heavenly wings supported her
for a moment almost motionless.

In that moment a splendid shape, gleaming like a bolt of silver, shot a
clear foot into the air and fell back with a massive splash.  The
turquoise butterfly was gone.

"Oh--h!" cried the Babe, almost with a sob in his voice.  He loved the
blue butterflies as he loved no others of their brilliant and perishing
kindred.

"_Gee_!" exclaimed Uncle Andy.  "But he's a _whale_!"

The Babe, in his surprise at this remarkable statement, forgot to mourn
for the fate of the blue butterfly.

"Why, Uncle Andy," he protested.  "I didn't know whales could live here
in this little lake."

Uncle Andy made a despairing gesture.  "Oh," he murmured wearily, "a
fellow has to be _so_ careful what he says to you!  The next time I
make a metaphorical remark in your presence, I'll draw a diagram to go
with it!"

The Babe looked puzzled.  He was on the point of asking what "a
metaphorical" was, and also "a diagram"; but he inferred that there
were no whales, after all, in Silverwater.  He had misunderstood Uncle
Andy's apparently simple statement of fact.  And he felt convicted of
foolishness.  Anxious to reinstate himself in his uncle's approval by
an unexpected display of knowledge he waived "metaphorical" aside, let
"diagram" remain a mystery, and remarked disinterestedly:

"Well, I'm glad there ain't any _swordfish_ in Silverwater."

"Bless the child!" cried Uncle Andy.  "Whatever has been putting
swordfish into your head?"

"Bill!" replied the Babe truthfully.

"And what do you know about swordfish, then?" proceeded his uncle.

The Babe was much flattered at the unusual favor of being allowed to
air his information.

"They're awful!" he explained.  "They're as big as a canoe.  And
they've got a sword as long as your leg, Uncle Andy, right in their
tail, so they can stab whales and porpoises with it, just carelessly,
without looking round, so as to make pretend it was an accident.  And
they're quicker than greased lightning, Bill says.  So you see, if
there was one here in the lake, we couldn't ever go in swimming."

Uncle Andy refrained from smiling.  He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe
for half a minute, while the Babe waited for his verdict.  At length he
said, between puffs:

"Well, now, there's quite a lot of truth in that, considering that it's
one of Bill's yarns.  The swordfish does carry a sword.  And he does
jab it into things, whales, sharks, boats, seals, anything whatever
that he thinks might be good to eat or that he does not like the looks
of.  And _you_ are quite correct in thinking that the lake would not be
a health-resort for us if it was occupied by a healthy swordfish.  But
in one particular Bill has got you badly mixed up.  The swordfish
carries his sword not in his tail, but on the tip of his snout more
like a bayonet than a sword.  I don't think Bill has ever been at all
intimate with swordfish--eh, what?"

The Babe shook his blonde head sadly over this instance of Bill's
inaccuracy.

"And are they as big as Bill says?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes!  He's all right _there_!" assented Uncle Andy.  "When they
are quite grown up they are sometimes as long as a canoe, a seventeen
or eighteen foot canoe.  And they _are_ quick as 'greased lightning'
all right!"

"But how big are they when they're little?" pursued the Babe, getting
around to his favorite line of investigation.

"Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle
Andy.  "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a
white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on
the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and
eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing
sword-fish."

"I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did
not find things just hatched very interesting.

"I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly.  "Of course when they are
first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy
trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose
one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he
begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn.  But _then_
things begin to hum."

"Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with
anticipation.

"Well," began Uncle Andy slowly, looking far across the lake as if he
saw things that the Babe could not see, "in one way and another, partly
by good luck and partly by good management, Little Sword succeeded in
dodging his enemies till he had grown to be about two feet in length,
without counting the six inches or so of sharp, tapering blade that
stood straight out from the tip of his nose.  He was as handsome a
youngster as you would wish to see, slender, gracefully tapering to the
base of the broad, powerful tail, wide-finned, radiant in silver and
blue-green, and with a splendid crest-like dorsal fin of vivid
ultramarine extending almost the whole length of his back.  His eyes
were large, and blazed with a savage fire.  Hanging poised a few feet
above the tops of the waving, rose-and-purple sea-anemones and the
bottle-green trailers of seaweed, every fin tense and quivering, he was
ready to dart in any direction where a feast or a fight might seem to
be waiting for him.

"You see, the mere fact that he was alive at all was proof that he had
come triumphantly through many terrible dangers, so it was no wonder he
had a good deal of confidence in himself.  And his shapely little body
was so packed full of energy, so thrilling with vitality, that he felt
himself already a sort of lord in those shoal-water domains.

"But with all his lively experiences, there were things, lots of
things, which Little Sword didn't know even yet."

"I _guess_ so!" murmured the Babe, suddenly impressed with the extent
of his own ignorance.

"For instance," Uncle Andy went on, ignoring the interruption, "he had
not yet learned anything about the Inkmaker."

Here he paused impressively, as if to lure the Babe on.  But into the
latter's head popped so many questions all together, at the mention of
a creature with so strange a name, that for the moment he could not for
the life of him get any one of them into words.  He merely gasped.  And
Uncle Andy, delighted with this apparent self-restraint, went on
graciously.

"You're improving a lot," said he.  "You're getting quite a knack of
holding your tongue.  Well, you're going to know all about it in half a
minute.

"Little Sword caught sight of a queer, watery-pinkish, speckled
creature on the bottom, just crossing a space of clear sand.  It was
about twice as long as himself, with a pair of terrible big, ink-black
eyes, and a long bunch of squirming feelers growing out of its head
like leaf-stalks out of the head of a beet.  He noticed that two of
these feelers were twice as long as the rest, which did not seem to him
a matter of the least importance.  But he noticed at the same time that
the creature looked soft and good to eat.  The next instant, like a ray
of light flashed suddenly, he darted at it.

"But swift as he was, the pale creature's inky eyes had noted him in
time.  His feelers bunched suddenly tight and straight, and he shot
backwards, at the same moment spouting a jet of black fluid from
beneath his beaked mouth.  The black jet spread instantly in a thick
cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword
could not see through it at all.  Instead of the soft flesh he had
expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a mass of sticky
anemones, shearing them from their base.

"In a fury, Little Sword dashed this way and that, trusting to luck
that he would strike his elusive enemy in the darkness.  But that
enemy's eyes, with their enormous bulging surface and the jetty
background to their lenses, could see clearly where the jewel-like eyes
of the young swordfish could make out nothing.  Little Sword, emerging
into the half light at the edge of the cloud, was just about to give up
the idle search, when something small but firm fastened itself upon his
side, so sharply that it seemed to bite into the flesh.

"Little Sword's tense muscles quivered at the shock, and he gave a
mighty leap which should, by all his customary reckoning, have carried
him fifty feet from the spot.  To his horrified amazement he did not go
as many inches, nor the half of it!  And then another something, small
but terrible, fastened itself upon his shoulder.

"Then the black, murky cloud thinned quite away; and Little Sword saw
what had happened.  The pale creature, having reached a rock to which
he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned
savagely upon his rash assailant.  Little Sword was the prisoner of
those two longer tentacles.  They were trying to drag him down within
reach of the other feelers, which writhed up at him like a lot of
hideous snakes."

"Ugh!" cried the Babe with a shudder.  "But how did they hold on to
him?"

"You see," said Uncle Andy, "every feeler, long or short, had a row of
saucer-shaped suckers along its underside, like the heads of those
rubber-tipped arrows which I've seen you shooting at the wall, and
which stick where they strike.  Only _these_ suckers could _hold on_, I
can tell you, so fast that _you_ could never have pulled off even the
littlest of them.

"Little Sword looked down into the awful eyes of the Inkmaker, and
realized that he had made a great mistake.  But he was game all
through.  It was not for a swordfish, however young, to give in to any
odds.  Besides, just below those two great eyes, which stared up at him
without ever a wink, he saw a terrible beak of a mouth, which opened
and shut as if impatient to get hold of him.  This sight was calculated
to encourage him to exert himself, if he had needed any more
encouragement than the grip of those two, pale, writhing feelers on his
flesh.

"Now, for his size, Little Sword was putting up a tremendous fight.
His broad, fluked tail and immense fins churned the water amazingly,
and enabled him to spring this way and that in spite of all the efforts
of the two long tentacles to hold him still.  Nevertheless, he was
slowly drawn downwards, till one of the shorter feelers reached for a
hold upon him.  He darted at it, and by a lucky plunge of his sword cut
its snaky tip clean off.  It twisted back out of the way, like a
startled worm; and Little Sword lunged at the next one.  He pierced it
all right, but at a point where it was so thick that the stroke did not
sever it, and the tip, curling over, fastened upon him.  At the same
moment another feeler fixed itself upon the base of his tail, half
paralyzing his struggles.

"Little Sword was now being drawn implacably downwards.  In his fierce
rage he struck at everything in reach, but he was too closely held to
inflict any serious wounds.  He was within eight or nine inches of
those awful, unwinking, ink-black eyes.  The great beak opened upwards
at him eagerly.  It looked as if his career was at an end--when the
Fates of the Deep Sea decided otherwise.  Apparently they had more use
for Little Sword than they had for the Inkmaker.  A long shadow dropped
straight downward.  It missed Little Sword by an inch or two.  And the
gaping, long-toothed jaws of an immense barracouta closed upon the head
of the Inkmaker, biting him clean in halves.  The blind body curled
backwards spasmodically; and the tentacles, shorn off at the roots,
fell aimlessly and helplessly apart.  Little Sword flashed away,
trailing his limp captors behind him till they dropped off.  And the
barracouta ate the remains of the Inkmaker at his leisure.  He had no
concern to those swordfish when there was tender and delicious squid to
be had; for the Inkmaker, you know, was just a kind of big squid, or
cuttlefish."

"But what's a barracouta?" demanded the Babe hurriedly.

"Well, he's just a fish!" said Uncle Andy.  "But he's a very savage and
hungry fish, some three or four feet long, with tremendous jaws like a
pickerel's.  And he lives only in the salt water, fortunately.  _He's_
not a nice fellow, either, to have around when you're swimming, I can
tell you!"

"Why?" queried the Babe.

But Uncle Andy ignored the question firmly, and went on with his story.

"After this adventure Little Sword kept a very sharp look-out for the
pallid, squirming tentacles, sometimes reaching out from a dark hole in
the rocks or from under a mantle of seaweed, which he knew to belong to
one of the Inkmakers.  He hated the whole tribe with bitter hatred; but
at the same time his caution was unsleeping.  He bided his time for
vengeance, and used his sword on crabs and flatfish and fat groupers.
And so he grew at a great rate, till in the swelling sense of his power
and swiftness his caution began to fade away.  Even the incident itself
faded from his memory, but not the hatred which had sprung from it, or
the knowledge which it had taught him.

"When Little Sword was about five feet in length he carried a weapon on
his snout not far from a foot long.  By this time he was a great rover,
hunting in the deep seas or the inshore tides as the whim of the chase
might lead him, and always spoiling for a fight.  He would jab his
sword into the belly of a twenty-foot grampus just to relieve his
feelings, and be off again before the outraged monster, bleeding
through his six inches of blubber, had time to even make a pretense of
charging him.  And he was already a terror to the seals, who, for all
their speed and dexterity, could neither catch him nor escape him.

"But he was getting a little careless.  And one day, as he was
sleeping, or basking, some ten feet below the surface, the broad, dark
form of a sawfish arose beneath him and thrust at him with his dreadful
saw.  The pleasant idea of the sawfish was to rip up the sleeper's
silver belly.  But Little Sword awoke in time to just escape the horrid
attack.  He swept off in a short circle, came back with a lightning
rush, and drove his sword full length into the stealthy enemy's
shoulder just behind the gills.  The great sawfish, heavy muscled and
slow of movement, made no attempt to defend himself, but plunged
suddenly downward into the gloomy depths where he loved to lie in wait.
After relieving his indignation by a couple more vicious thrusts.
Little Sword realized that he was too small to accomplish anything
against this sneaking and prowling bulk, and shot off to look for a
less dangerous basking place.

"It was soon after this close shave with the sawfish that Little Sword
came once more across the path of the Inkmaker.  He--"

But the Babe could contain himself no longer.  He had been bursting
with questions for the last ten minutes, and had heroically restrained
himself.  But this was too much for him.

"Why, Uncle Andy," he cried.  "I thought the Inkmaker was dead.  I
thought the barracouta had eaten him up, feelers and eyes and all."

"Oh, you're a lot too particular!" grumbled Uncle Andy.  "This was
_another_ Inkmaker, of course.  And a very much bigger and more
dangerous one, moreover, as you'll see presently.  It was little _he_
had to fear from the barracoutas.  In fact, he had just fixed one of
his longer tentacles on a vigorous four-foot barracouta, and was slowly
drawing him down within reach of the rest of the feelers, when Little
Sword's shining eyes alighted upon the struggle.

"This particular Inkmaker was crouching in a sort of shallow basin
between rocks which were densely fringed with bright-striped weeds,
starry madrepores, and sea-anemones of every lovely color.  Disturbed
by the struggle, however, the madrepores and anemones were nervously
closing up their living blooms.  The Inkmaker, who always managed
somehow to have his own colors match his surroundings, so that his
hideous form would not show too plainly and frighten his victims away,
was now of a dirty pinkish-yellow, blotched and striped with
purplish-brown; and his tentacles were like a bunch of striped snakes.
Only his eyes never changed.  They lay unwinking, two huge round lenses
of terrible and intense blackness, staring upwards from the base of the
writhing tentacles."

The Babe shuddered again, and wished that the beautiful swordfish would
swim away as quickly as possible from the slimy horror.  But he
refrained interrupting.  It would be dreadful if Uncle Andy should get
annoyed and stop at this critical point!

"When Little Sword saw those long feelers dragging the barracouta
down," went on Uncle Andy, after relighting his pipe, "he darted
forward like a blue flame and jabbed his sword right through the
nearest one."

"Oh, ho!" cried the Babe, forgetting caution.  "He remembered how the
barracouta had saved _him_!"

"Not much!"  grunted Uncle Andy.  "There's no sentiment about a
swordfish, I can tell you.  He'd have jabbed the barracouta, and eaten
him, too, just as quick as look, but he hated the Inkmaker, and could
not think of anything else.  With a screwing backward pull he wrenched
his sword out of the feeler, which seemed hardly to notice the wound.
In the same instant another feeler snatched at him, for Mr. Inkmaker,
you know, had ten tentacles, every one of them spoiling for a fight.
It got only a slight hold, however, and Little Sword, whose strength
was now something amazing, tore himself clear with a great livid,
bleeding, burning patch on his side.

"And now, raging mad though he was, a gleam of sense flashed into his
brain.  He saw that it was not much use stabbing those tough tentacles.
Lurching forward as if to stand on his head he shot straight downward,
and drove his sword full length into one of those dreadful eyes.

"In an instant three or four feelers closed upon him.  But they were
now thrashing a little aimlessly, so that they did not work well
together.  The monster was confused by that terrible, searching trust.
Little Sword was hampered by the feelers clutching at him, but he still
had room to use his weapon.  With all his weight and quivering strength
he drove his sword again deep into the Inkmaker's head, twisting and
wrenching it sideways as he drew it out.  Other tentacles closed over
him, but seemed to have lost their clutching power through the attack
upon the source of their nervous energy.  The struggling barracouta was
drawn down with them, but blindly; and the water was now utterly black
with the rank ink which the monster was pumping forth.

"For a few moments all was one boiling convulsion of fish and tentacles
and ink, Little Sword simply stabbing and stabbing at the soft mass
under his weapon.  Then, all at once, the tentacles relaxed, falling
away as slack as seaweed.  The barracouta, nearly spent, swam off
without even waiting to say 'Thank you.'  And Little Sword coming to
his senses as he realized his victory, rose slowly out of the area of
the ink cloud.  He knew that the Inkmaker's flesh was very good to eat,
and he merely waited for the cloud to settle before making a meal which
would completely satisfy his vengeance."

The Babe was thoughtful for a few moments after Uncle Andy stopped
speaking.  At length he said positively:

"I'm glad we don't have any Inkmakers, either, in the lake."

"Umph!" grunted Uncle Andy, "there are lots of things we don't have
that we can very well do without."

CHAPTER V

ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP

Casting his flies across the eddying mouth of one of those cold streams
which feed the crystal bosom of Silverwater, Uncle Andy had landed a
magnificent pink-bellied trout--five pounds, if an ounce!

"Hi, but isn't he a whopper?" he cried exultantly, holding up his prize
for the inspection of the Babe, who had been watching the struggle
breathlessly.

"A--whopper?" repeated the Babe doubtfully.  His idea of a whopper was
something that objectionable little boys have been known to tell in
order to get themselves out of a scrape.  No full-fledged fisherman as
yet, he did not see what it could have to do with a trout.

Uncle Andy seemed to divine his difficulty.

"I mean," he explained, "isn't he a big one?  _Tremendous_?"

At this again the Babe looked doubtful.  The fish was certainly a very
beautiful one; but to the Babe's eyes it did not seem in any way
remarkable for size.  Yet he did not like to appear to disagree with
Uncle Andy.

"Is it _big_?" he inquired politely.  "Bill says there's some fish
bigger than a house."

Uncle Andy looked at him askance.

"Seems to me," said he, "you're mighty hard to please to-day.  And,
anyhow, Bill talks nonsense.  They're not fish, those monsters he was
telling you about.  They're _whales_."

"But they live in the water, don't they?" protested the Babe in
surprise.

"Of course!" agreed Uncle Andy, wrapping his big trout up in wet grass
and seating himself on a handy log for a smoke.

"Then why aren't they fish?" persisted the Babe, ever anxious to get to
the root of a matter.

"Because they're not," replied Uncle Andy, impatient at having let
himself in for explanations, which he always disliked.  "They're
animals, just as much as a dog or a muskrat."

The Babe wrinkled his forehead in perplexity.  And Uncle Andy relented.

"You see," he continued, "they're not fish, because they cannot breathe
under water like fish can, but have to come to the surface for air,
just as we would have to.  And they're not fish, because they nurse
their babies as a cow or a cat does.  And--and there are lots of other
reasons."

"What are the other reasons?" demanded the Babe eagerly.

But Uncle Andy had felt himself getting into deep water.  He adroitly
evaded the question.

"Do you suppose this old trout here," said he, pointing to the grassy
bundle, "used to love and take care of its little ones, like the whale
I'm going to tell you about loved and took care of hers?  No indeed!
The trout had hundreds of thousands, and liked nothing better than to
eat them whenever it got the chance.  But the whale had only one--at a
time, that is--and she always used to think there was nothing else like
it in the world.  There are lots of other mothers as foolish as that.
Yours, for instance, now."

The Babe laughed.  It pleased him when he understood one of Uncle
Andy's jokes--which was not always, by any means.  He squatted himself
on the moss before the log, where he could stare straight up into Uncle
Andy's face with his blue, steady, expectant eyes.

"It was a long way off from Silverwater," began Uncle Andy in a
far-away voice, and with a far-away look in his eyes, "that the whale
calf was born.  It was up North, where the summer sun swung low over a
world of cold green seas, low grey shores, crumbling white ice-fields,
and floating mountains of ice that flashed with lovely, fairy-like
tints of palest blue and amethyst.  The calf himself, with his slippery
greyish-black back and under-parts of a dirty cream color, was not