WITH BEAK AND CLAW ii 



in life; his old hound, Dinah, and his orphaned 

 nephew, Shan. The big tom-cat, Bob, came in but 

 a poor third. 



Bull had taught Dinah all the hunting tricks that 

 a dog should know. In exactly the same spirit, he 

 had gone to considerable pains to teach Shan all 

 those things which he considered a boy ought to 

 know. The lad could read, write, and add a col- 

 umn of figures, and, at that point. Bull deemed his 

 education complete. 



**If yo' can shoot, fish, an' use a hoe," he was 

 wont to say, '*yo' won't starve in the country; an' 

 if yo' can read, write, an' cipher, yo' won't starve 

 in the city. An' that's all there is to it." 



The library in the cabin was not extensive. It 

 consisted only of a Testament, a series of almanacs 

 advertising a malaria cure, which Bull brought 

 every year from the store where he did his trad- 

 ing, and a stray volume out of a set of 

 ''Encyclopaedia of American Birds," which Bull 

 had found in a deserted duck-blind one spring, 

 probably left there by some city sportsman the 

 winter before. 



This volume of the ''Encyclopaedia of Birds" 

 was, second to Bull himself, the strongest influence 

 in Shan's life. Possibly, if the whole Encyclo- 



