THE MINK 



his prize from his envious and less fortu- 

 nate brothers. 



When summer wanes, they will be a 

 scattered family, each member shifting 

 for himself. Some still haunt the alder 

 thicket where they first saw light, whose 

 netted shadows of bare branches have 

 thickened about them to continued 

 shade of leafage, in whose midday twi- 

 light the red flame of the cardinal flower 

 burns as a beacon set to guide the dusky 

 wanderer home. Others have adven- 

 tured far down the winding brook to 

 the river, and followed its slowing cur- 

 rent, past rapids and cataract, to where 

 it crawls through the green level of 

 marshes beloved of water fowl and of 

 gunners, whose wounded victims, escap- 

 ing them, fall an easy prey to the lurk- 

 ing mink. 



Here, too, in their season are the 

 tender ducklings of wood duck, teal, and 

 dusky duck, and, all the year round, fat 

 muskrats, which furnish for the price of 

 conquest a banquet that the mink most 

 delights in. 



In the wooded border are homes ready 

 builded for him under the buttressed 

 24 



