RED SLAYER AND THE TERROR 243 
in the grass, and sparrows, too, and grasshoppers 
and such small fry. As he wandered along the 
brookside, he not infrequently came upon signs of 
his cousins, and once he found the body of a Pekin 
duck, half in the water, half out, its neck viciously 
bitten. That was the work of a mink, he knew. 
It was a fat duck, freshly killed that night, and 
Red Slayer cautiously investigated the carcass. 
He was tasting a morsel of the flesh when a warn- 
ing odor smote his nostrils, and rearing his head, 
he looked across the three feet of running brown 
water directly into the snapping black eyes of one 
of his cousins, who was also rearing a sleek brown 
neck, out of the grass on the farther bank. 
Cousin mink opened his mouth slightly, show- 
ing white teeth, and made a remark. It was not 
the sort of a remark regarded as good form be- 
‘tween cousins of gentle breeding; certainly it dis- 
closed no sense of the good fellowship of con- 
sanguinity. Red Slayer knew that his unamiable 
cousin had some inches the better of him in the 
primitive style of argument for which he was evi- 
dently preparing, and deemed discretion much 
the better part of valor. He fled. But he 
