244 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



the experiment of rearing a young mink with a family 

 of kittens? 



The trapper calls to mind other experiments. 

 There was the little beaver that chewed up his canoe 

 and gnawed a hole of escape through the door. There 

 were the three little bob-cats left in the woods behind 

 his cabin last year when he refrained from setting out 

 traps and tied up his dog to see if he could not catch 

 the whole family, mother and kittens, for an Eastern 

 museum. Furtively at first, the mother had come to 

 feed her kittens. Then the man had put out rugs to 

 keep the kittens warm and lain in wait for the mother; 

 but no sooner did she see her offspring comfortably 

 cared for, than she deserted them entirely, evidently 

 acting on the proverb that the most gracious enemy is 

 the most dangerous, or else deciding that the kits were 

 so well off that she was not needed. Adopting the 

 three little wild-cats, the trapper had reared them past 

 blind-eyes, past colic and dumps and all the youthful 

 ills to which live kittens are heirs, when trouble began. 

 The longing for the wilds came. Even catnip green 

 and senna tea boiled can t cure that. So keenly did the 

 gipsy longing come to one little bob that he perished 

 escaping to the woods by way of the chimney flue. The 

 second little bob succeeded in escaping through a 

 parchment stop-gap that served the trapper as a 

 window. And the third bobby dealt such an ill-tem 

 pered gash to the clog s nose that the combat ended 

 in instant death for the cat. 



Thinking over these experiments, the trapper wisely 

 puts the mink back in the nest with words which it 

 would have been well for that litle ball of down to have 

 understood. He told it he would come back for it next 



