“But once it happened she was not so sly as she might have been.  You see, after all, in spite of her fierce eyes, she was still only a kitten of a lynx; and she had to play once in a while.  At such times she would pounce on a leaf as if it were a mouse, or just tumble all over herself pretending she had a real tail and was trying to catch it.  So, of course, when she happened to pass under a low, bushy branch and caught sight of a slim, smooth, black tip of a tail, no bigger than your little finger, hanging down from it, she naturally couldn’t resist the temptation.  She pranced up on her hind legs and clawed that black tip of a tail—­clawed it hard!

“The next instant, before she could prance away again, the other end of that slim, black tip swung out of the branch and whipped itself round and round her body, and a black head, with sharp fangs in it, hit her biff, biff, biff! on the nose.  It was the tail of a black snake she had tried to play with.”

“Gee!  But she wasn’t sly that time!” exclaimed the Babe, shaking his head wisely.

“The black snake wasn’t poisonous, of course,” continued Uncle Andy, “but his fangs hurt the Little Sly One’s nose, I can tell you.  But the worst of it was, how he could squeeze!  Those black coils tightened, tightened, till the Little Sly One, who in her first fright had set up a terrific spitting and yowling, found she had no breath to waste on noise.  Her ribs felt as if they would crack.  But, fortunately for her, her teeth and claws were available for business.  She fell to biting, and ripping, and clawing, till the black snake realized it was no Teddy Bear he had got hold of.  For a minute or two he stood it, squeezing harder and harder.  Then he wanted to let go.

“And this, I think, was where he made a mistake.  As he relaxed his deadly coils and swung his head round, the Little Sly One struck out with both forepaws at once, and succeeded in catching the hissing, darting head.  She caught it fairly, and her long, knife-sharp claws sank in, holding it like a carpenter’s vise.  The next minute she had her teeth in the back of the snake’s neck, chewing and tearing.

“Now, the snake’s tail was still around the branch, so he tried furiously to swing the Little Sly One up and crush her against the branch.  But she was too heavy and too strong.  So he came down, instead, and thrashed wildly among the leaves, trying to get a new grip on her.  It was no use, however.  He had made too big a mistake.  And the next minute he kind of straightened out.  The Little Sly One had bitten through his backbone, just behind the head.

“Well, now, you see, she had a good square meal before her.  But, being very sly, she first looked all round to see if anyone was coming to dine with her.  There was no one in sight, but she knew how curiously things get about sometimes.  So she growled, on general principles, grabbed the snake in her teeth, and climbed up the tree so she might eat in peace.