THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



latter was still running, but running in a feeble, 

 hesitating manner. 



Another trapper told me a similar story. He saw 

 upon the snow where a mink had run a rabbit 

 round a small hill. They had made the circuit 

 several times, the rabbit's leaps growing shorter and 

 shorter, until at last the mink had seized it and drunk 

 its blood and eaten a hole in its neck. I can account 

 for such things upon no other theory than that the 

 rabbit, when it finds itself followed by its deadly 

 enemy, gradually becomes paralyzed with fear and 

 falls an easy victim. No doubt the lynx and the wild- 

 cat and the fox waylay the rabbit at night as a cat 

 does a mouse or a squirrel, but the weasel tribe fol- 

 low it and are as relentless as fate itself. A rat pur- 

 sued by a weasel is fairly beside itself with fear, and 

 has been known to take refuge in a bed where a man 

 was sleeping, in order to escape. A chicken or a hen 

 pursued by a weasel is in a perfect panic of fright, 

 and I have seen the pursuing weasel follow the flee- 

 ing and screaming fowl to my very feet, when he 

 seized it and was pinned to earth by my boot. I saw 

 him catch the full-grown chicken; why could 

 he not catch a rabbit? When I seized him with my 

 thumb and finger back of the ears and held him so 

 he could not bite me, did ever anything look so fierce 

 and devilish as this creature did? His eyes fairly 

 burned. It seemed as if I could see the blood of his 

 victims aflame in them. I dashed him fiercely upon 

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