because he was very sorry and angry about the dog, he also shot the lynx kittens, where they crowded, spitting savagely, at the back of the cave.  But there were only three of them at the back of the cave.  The Little Sly One, instead of bothering to spit when there were other things more important to be done, had run up the wall and hidden in a crevice, so still she didn’t even let her tail twitch.  Of course, like all her family, she didn’t really have a tail, but merely a little blunt stub, perhaps two inches long.  But that stub could have twitched, and wanted desperately to twitch, only she would not let it.  She always seemed to think she had a tail, and, if she had had, it would have stuck out so the man could have seen it, the crevice being such a very small one.  You see how sly she was!

“Of course, the Little Sly One was lonely for the next few days, but she was kept so busy hunting breakfasts, and lunches, and dinners, and suppers that she hadn’t time to fret much.  She was something like a three-quarters-grown kitten now, except for her having no tail to speak of, and curious, fierce-looking tufts to her ears, and pale eyes so savage and bright that they seemed as if they could look through a log even if it wasn’t hollow.

“Also, her feet were twice as big as a kitten’s would have been, and her hindquarters were high and powerful, like a rabbit’s.  Her soft, bright fur was striped like a tiger’s—­though by the time she was grown up it would have changed to a light, shadowy, brownish gray, hard to detect in the dim thickets.

“The Little Sly One was so sly and so small that she had no difficulty in creeping up on birds and woodmice, to say nothing of grasshoppers, beetles and crickets.  But one day she learned, to her great annoyance, that she was not the only thing in the woods that could do this creeping up.  She had been watching a long time at the door of a woodmouse burrow, under a tree, when suddenly she seemed to feel danger behind her.  Without waiting to look round, being so sly, she shot into the air and landed on the trunk of a tree.  As she madly clawed up it, the jaws of a leaping fox came together with a snap just about three inches behind her, just, in fact, where an ordinary tail would have been.  So, you see, her tail really saved her life, just by her not having any!

“Well, when she was safely up the tree, of course she couldn’t help spitting and growling down at the hungry fox for a minute or two, while he looked up at her with his mouth watering.  Then, however, she curled herself up in a crotch and pretended to go to sleep.  And then the fox went away, because he didn’t know when she would wake up, and he didn’t want to wait!  You see how sly she was!