a fire engine which has just chased up a false alarm. He watched me very closely, and the following day, as I tapped out a message of hope to Upsidaisi, I noted a gleam of intelligence in Tom-Tom’s green eyes. I began to wonder, but I had no time to frame a definite thought, for, with a prolonged meow, Tom-Tom scratched on the floor vigorously, and my accustomed ears soon made out, through the bewildering succession of dots and dashes, another message in the Morse code.

“Where is that blamed Mouse?” it said. “My Kittens are about to be weaned and require solid food.”

There was a terrible cry of pain from the shelf, and before I could protest or interfere in any way, Little Upsidaisi was out of the cabin, running like mad, with Tom-Tom in full pursuit.

Instinctively, I followed them—through the dense undergrowth, over open fields, through barbed wire fences, along unblazed forest trails, and so on, with Upsidaisi always several lengths in the lead.

Even if I would, I could not interfere, and I had long since learned that it is the truest kindness to let the animals fight it out among themselves, since the fittest must survive and the weakest be crushed to the wall.

Now and then I heard a sob from the grass, where the Mouse was running in deathly fear, and deep, harsh breathings from Tom-Tom, who was now gaining his second wind and plunging ever closer to his hapless victim. A little ahead was the railroad track, which much surprised me. I had been so interested that I had kept no account of the distance and it came to me with something of a shock that we had run over ten miles.On went the mad struggle for life. There was a whistle near by, and I knew the express was coming. Upsidaisi was nowhere in sight, and Tom-Tom was nosing through the long grass eagerly. Then there was a little glimmer of white and silver in the sun, and Upsidaisi flew across the track just as the express rounded the curve. Tom-Tom followed, heedless of his danger, and the cow-catcher, striking his tense body, threw him so far up into the air that the corpse has not yet been recovered.

I stood aghast at the fiendish cleverness of it. Little Upsidaisi had decoyed his enemy to the track, at the very moment the express was to pass!

Scarcely conscious of what I did, I picked up the exhausted Mouse and walked home in a brown study. My soul was torn with grief at the loss of my pet, but the new facts in Natural History that I had learned were worth some sacrifice.

 Prev. P 8/112 next