COUSINS OF CATS 231 



a good-sized little pig, and finally a pair of tame white, 

 pink-eyed rabbits that were my special pride. 



"In going flower hunting this day I strayed away 

 from the others to look for the thousand and one things 

 that always made the woods a fairy picture book to me. 

 I should not have been surprised to have found the en- 

 trance to the palace of the sleeping beauty between the 

 rocks, but instead of Beauty I found a Beast ! " 



" Oh, uncle, you are joking; all those were dream sto- 

 ries that never really happened," said Dodo, solemnly. 



" I said a Beast, not the Beast, and it happened in 

 this way. I was resting on the edge of a moss-covered 

 rock under the edge of which lay the trunk of an enor- 

 mous chestnut that had been blown over and gone mostly 

 to decay. As I swimg my heels down and kicked this 

 trunk, three little furry heads appeared at the hollow 

 in the end. I took them for the kittens of some stray 

 cat, and stooping over tried to catch one, but they gave 

 a cry in concert, something between a spit and a yowl, 

 and disappeared in the tree. Then I noticed that the 

 mossy ground by the stump was dug up and there was 

 the partly covered remains of one of my rabbits ! 



" Before I could think or put two and two together, 

 I heard the snapping of some twigs behind me on the 

 rocks, and as I turned a most weird and unpleasant 

 ' meau-U-U ' greeted me, and there stood a Wildcat, ears 

 back, jaws snarling, its long legs braced for a spring ! I 

 did not know that the American members of this family 

 will not, any more than Wolves, attack man unless 

 driven to bay, that they never hunt in packs, or that 

 the cat was fully as much frightened as I was, and that 

 she had merely returned home in a hurry in answer to 



