CHAPTER IV. 
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LUCY 
i aad was born with a price on her head. 
Lucy doesn’t sound much like the name of 
a fugitive from justice, of a vicious character 
hunted for the legal reward. Nevertheless, Lucy 
is what she came to be called by all the country- 
side, no doubt just because Lucy is such a foolish 
name for a wildcat. Lucy is a nice name for the 
heroine of a poem by William Wordsworth, but 
as the Christian appellation for twenty-five 
pounds of gray-black and dirty white fur and 
muscle and claws roaming the rocky, precipitous 
slopes of one of the highest of the Berkshire Hills, 
seeking what it may devour, the name has suf- 
ficient incongruity to please the Yankee taste. 
I hesitate a little to tell the entire story of 
Lucy’s career, lest I be called a “ nature fakir.” 
It is all true, but those who raise the cry of nature 
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