10 



bend, double on her track, even the lightest 

 dog could not over-run her. She is making 

 blindly for the far, thick brier -field a 

 thorny haven she may never reach. Now 

 she drops, flat and breathless, on the snow 

 the nearest dog turns a summersault in the 

 effort to check him and seize her. Before 

 his fellows can come up human hands have 

 swung her aloft a loud halloo of victory 

 tells other hunters her fate. 



Poor little Mistress Molly ! Eden's inno- 

 cence seems to linger in your limpid, appeal- 

 ing eyes. You are full of pretty craft, of 

 gentle guile. Seemingly you ask little of 

 earth space for your young to play, a din- 

 ner of herbs and buds. Surely man might 

 grant so much ungrudgingly leave you un- 

 molested to frisk through woodland ways. 

 And yet and yet if he spared you, it were 

 his own destruction. You would crowd him 

 from the face of earth, eat every green thing, 

 and leave behind you a desert inside of a 

 hundred years. Verily, the problem of nec- 

 essary evil is one too complex for mere hu- 

 man solution. 



Now the sun turns westering. Here, at 

 the swamp's edge, is a dead tree gaunt, 

 white, barkless. Twenty feet from earth a 

 hollow makes in. Once a great branch grew 



