The Ledge on Bald Face

g of the S

lter from the drift of the storm. The storm was one of icy rain, which everywhere froze instantly as it fell. All night it had been busy encasing the whole wilderness-every tree and bush and stump, and the snow in every open meadow or patch of forest glade-in an armour of

s was ablaze on the instant with elusive tongues and points of coloured light-jewelled flames, not of fire, but of frost. The world had become a palace of crystal and opal, a dream-palace that would vanish at a touch, a

light sound was so loud upon the stillness that he gave a startled leap into the air, landing many feet away from his refuge. He slipped and sprawled, recovered his foothold, an

, going circumspectly over the slippery surface, and sat up on his hindquarters to nibble at them. To his intense surprise and disappointment, each twig and aromatic bud was sealed away, inaccessible, though clearly visible, under a quarter inch of ice. Twig after twig he investigated with his inq

ught a movement somewhere behind him, beyond the clump of twigs which he had just left. Only for a second did he remain thus rigid. Then the spring was loosed. With a frantic boun

ender, and sinuous, and he moved as if all compacted of whipcord muscle. The grace of his long, deliberate bounds was indescribable. His head was triangular in shape, the ears small and close-set, the black-tipped muzzle sharply pointed, with the thin, black lips upcurled to show the white fangs; and the eyes glowed r

n flight. He knew it would run in a circle, and he took a chord of that circle, so as to head the fugitive off. He knew he might have to repeat this manoeuvre severa

He was running irresolutely now, with little aimless leaps to this side and to that, and his leaps were short and lifeless, as if his nerve-power were getting paralysed. About the middle of the glade he seemed to give up altogether, as

pace by a hair's-breadth. With the same terrible deliberation he approached. Only his jaws opened

s, and he would have been at his v

s, that clutched and bit like the jaws of a trap, seized him by the back. He felt himself partly lifted from the snow. He screamed again. But now he struggled

though he was, ever rejoicing to kill for the lust of killing long after his hunger was satisfied, he had the courage of

freed her talons from the rabbit's back and clutched frantically at her assailant. The rabbit, writhing out from under the struggle, went leaping off into cove

hunched up his lithe little body so that she could not reach it with her talons. She tore furiously at his back with her rending beak, but the amazingly tough, rubbery muscles resisted even that weapon

lithe body lengthened out under the agonizing stress of it, but it could not pull his jaws from thei

e of the snow. As the struggle shifted ground, those flapping wings came suddenly in contact with a bush, whose iced twigs were brittle as glass and glittering

y care over the slippery crust. He turned hopefully to investigate, trusting to get a needed breakfast out of some fellow-marauder's difficultie

a lightning rush and a shattering of icicles. He was just too late. The great bird was already in the air, carrying her deadly burden with her. The fox leapt straight upwards, hoping to pull her down, but his clashing j

wk was in extremest straits, ran on beneath

ed to the fact that he was journeying through the air. And he knew nothing of what was going on below. His

shot a million coloured points of light in the sunrise, the end came. The fangs of the weas

gleams and crystals. With wide-sprawled wings she thudded down upon the snow-crust, almost under the fox's c

nd tossed the long, limp body, aside upon the snow. He had no use for the rank, stringy meat of the weasel when better f