“The tail was no good to eat, so she bit it off and scornfully let it drop.  If that black snake hadn’t had a tail, he would never have been eaten by a kitten lynx; so the Little Sly One, as she considered this point, and also thought of the fox, said to herself:  ’Well, maybe my tail doesn’t amount to much, after all.  But there doesn’t seem to be any luck in tails, anyway.’

“For all that, things in general were keeping her so very, very busy the Little Sly One felt lonely and homesick at times.  And especially she felt the need of some kind of a nest which she could call her very own, where she could curl herself up and go to sleep without fear of unpleasant interruptions.

“This sort of thing, as you may imagine, was not to be found every day of the week.  Most such places had owners, and the Little Sly One was not yet big enough and strong enough to turn the owners out.  If she had been big enough—­ Well, you see, she hadn’t any more conscience than just enough to get along with comfortably.

“One fine day, soon after her adventure with the black snake, her search for a home of her own brought her out into the warm sunshine of a little, deserted clearing.  It was an old lumber camp, all grown up with tall grass and flowering weeds.  The weeds and grass crowded up around the very threshold of the old gray log cabin.

“The Little Sly One stopped short, blinking in the strong light and sniffing cautiously.  There was no smell of danger—­none whatever, but a scent came to her nose that she thought was quite the nicest scent in the world.

“Where did it come from?  Oh, there is was—­that bunch of dull-green weeds!  Forgetting prudence, forgetting everything, she ran forward and began rolling herself over and over in ecstasy in the bed of strong-smelling weeds.”

“Catnip!” suggested the Babe.

“Of course!” agreed Uncle Andy impatiently.  “What else could it be?

“The Little Sly One had never heard tell of catnip, but she knew right off it was something good for every kind of cat.  When she had had quite enough of it, she felt kind of light and silly, and not afraid of anything.  So, as bold as you please, she marched right up to the cabin.

“The door was shut.  She climbed upon the roof.  There was an old bark chimney, with a great hole rotted in its base.  She looked in.

“It was pleasantly shadowy inside, with a musty smell and no sign of danger.  She dropped upon a narrow shelf.  From the shelf, sniffing and glancing this way and that, she sprang to a kind of wider shelf close under the eaves.

“That was a bunk, of course, where one of the lumbermen used to sleep, though she didn’t know that.  It was full of old dry hay, very warmy and cozy.  And the hay, as the Little Sly One observed at once, was full of mice.

“She pounced on one at once and ate it.  Decidedly, this was the place for her.  She curled herself up in the warm hay and went to sleep without fear of any enemies coming to disturb her.”