SHERWOOD 



.4 .V .4 VG VST DAY D VEL 163 



If you had been watching just then, you would have seized and 

 killed the little, cruel brown spider that danced in her web on six 

 of her eight legs and seemed to be tickling her horrified victim with 

 her fore-legs just for the demon-like joy of teasing her. You 

 would have had to look carefully to see the elf thread she was 

 pulling from a tiny opening beneath her abdomen and weaving 

 with magic speed from one to another and another of the wasp's 

 struggling feet. In a second or so the wasp found all six bound 

 together in a clinging mesh of thread, finer than the very hairs on 

 her body but woven so it could never break! She had been twist- 

 ing her thin, long "waist" with all her strength in her efforts to 

 reach the Spider with the sting-armed tip of her abdomen, and 

 now she gave the most violent, desperate twist of all. But the 

 nimble Arachnid was suddenly tickling the top of her thorax! 

 Then she had gone, running like a brown shadow up the web to the 

 step. She stopped and pressed the under side of her body firmly 

 against the step at the opening where the thread unraveled. Thus 

 fastening the thread from the wasp's thorax to the roof over her 

 web, she hung, thoughtfully watching, while her victim t wasted 

 and jerked, tangling herself more hopelessly and wasting her 

 strength. 



In another moment the tired wasp felt her thorax being tickled 

 and then her wings. She jerked them desperately, but one little 

 hind wing was already tied to the net that bound her legs. She 

 twisted her abdomen but the spider's instinct told where her 

 enemy's weapon was, and she stayed out of its reach, spinning more 

 nimbly than the goddess, Arachne, had ever spun till the wasp's 

 wings were caught and tied. Then, fastening a second thread to 

 the thorax, she ran up to the web's roof, holding it tight. Here she 

 drew it up till it pulled the wasp up slightly, and fastened it to the 

 step. As the wasp struggled in a nearly hopeless and very tired 

 manner she tangled her delicate wings and legs more completely. 

 Gan we ever know whether her insect memory flitted back to her 

 half filled cell, when her wings were no longer free to take her there? 

 She would have flown home at once if she had been suddenly freed, 

 and perhaps she would have caught and taken the spider with her, 

 but would her instinct ever remind her of something she could 

 not do? 



When the brown shadow fell down again it danced about her 

 head for an instant, tightened the threads on her wings and legs, 



