132 A TELLING TAIL. 
well, then he just seemed to flicker into 
nowhere, as a waiting, watching shadow with 
a hooked beak dropped, as a stone may drop, 
upon the mouse, and bore her, kicking, aloft. 
That was a kestrel falcon, who had been hover- 
ing over the hole, motionless save for quivering 
wings—just as if he were hanging by an in- 
visible string from the dome of heaven—ever 
since his quick eyes had spotted the mouse go 
in. But the point was, if the mouse had not 
happened to come out first, he might have 
fallen upon the unarmed glass-snake instead, 
and the escape of the latter was simply a 
matter of half-an-inch, more or less. 
Nothing more appeared of that legless one 
for a space, till we find him, towards evening, 
along the hedge, hunting for snails. Great 
care and stealth were needed for this, because 
he had no teeth worth speaking of to crush 
the snail’s house with. He had to nab the 
wily prey when out of its house, or not at all. 
Then, slowly and quietly, looming large in 
the dusk, came the rotund, rolling, spiked form 
of a hedgehog, looking—as hedgehogs gener- 
ally are in a phlegmatic way—for trouble. 
His quick, little, pig-like eyes spotted the 
glass-snake lying like a metal bar in the red 
rays of the setting sun, and instantly his 
slow crawl was cast from him. With a swift 
