The Boy and the Lynx 
had sent the three warnings: it was the biggest 
of its kind, its children were grown up, it was 
hollow. The wintry blast that sent it down 
had broken it across and revealed a great hole 
where should have been its heart. A long 
wooden cavern in the middle of a sunny open- 
ing, it now lay, and presented an ideal home 
for a Lynx when she sought a sheltered nesting- 
place for her coming brood. 
Old was she and gaunt, for this was a year 
of hard times for the Lynxes. A Rabbit plague 
the autumn before had swept away their main 
support; a winter of deep snow and sudden 
crusts had killed off nearly all the Partridges; 
a long wet spring had destroyed the few grow- 
ing coveys and had kept the ponds and streams 
so full that Fish and Frogs were safe from their 
armed paws, and this mother Lynx fared no 
better than her kind. 
The little ones—half starved before they 
came—were a double drain, for they took the 
time she might have spent in hunting. 
The Northern Hare is the favorite food of 
the Lynx, and in some years she could have 
killed fifty in one day, but never one did she 
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