A TELLING TAIL. 133 
run and a quite unexpected agility he had 
rushed at the reptile, and—oh, horrors !— 
chopped tt in half. 
At any rate, there were some five or six 
inches of the after-end of the glass-snake 
twisting and bobbing about among the grass, 
and there was the hedgehog worrying it. He 
continued to worry it for a space, and then 
sat back to stare. And the half of the reptile 
continued to wriggle for nine minutes, and 
then lay still. 
Then the hedgehog touched it, and, lo! 
instantly it jumped clean up in the air, and 
the contortions began, in a fresh set, all over 
again. For twenty-eight minutes this game 
continued thus: dance of part of reptile for a 
bit, then curl up and stillness, touch of hedge- 
hog and fresh dance. Finally and suddenly, 
the hedgehog seemed to have gone mad. He 
rushed around, nosing in the grass, hunting 
everywhere, looking into every cranny. It 
had just dawned upon his slow brain that, 
while he was fooling with this one portion of 
his prey, the other portion had vanished. In 
fact, that other portion had got clean away, 
for it was a lizard without legs, as I have told 
you, and it had but cast its tail, as many 
lizards can quite easily do. Later it would 
grow another. 
