Then, as the tenth minute dragged its enormous, trailing length along, came that terrible feeling already alluded to—­that he must either move or burst.  With poignant self-pity he argued the two desperate alternatives within his soul.  But, fortunately for him, before he felt himself obliged to come to any final decision, something happened, and his pain and doubts were forgotten.

Two big yellow-gray snowshoe rabbits came hopping lazily past, one just ahead of the other.  One jumped clean over Uncle Andy’s out-stretched feet, as if they were of no account or interest whatever to a rabbit.  The other stopped and thumped vigorously on the ground with his strong hind foot.  At this signal the first one also stopped.  They both sat up on their haunches, ears thrust forward in intense interrogation, and gazed at the two moveless figures behind the poplar sapling.

The one immediately in front of him absorbed all the Child’s attention.  Its great, bulging eyes surveyed him from head to foot, at first with some alarm, then with half-contemptuous curiosity.  Its immensely long ears see-sawed meditatively, and its queer three-cornered mouth twinkled incessantly as if it were talking to itself.  At last, apparently having decided that the Child was nothing worth taking further notice of, it dropped on all fours, nibbled at a leaf, discarded it, and hopped off to find more tasty provender.  Its companion, having “sized up” Uncle Andy in the same way, presently followed.  But being of the more suspicious disposition, it stopped from time to time to glance back and assure itself that the strange, motionless things behind the poplar sapling were not attempting to follow it.

The Child was immensely interested.  He thought of a lot of questions to ask as soon as he should be allowed to speak, and he resolved to remember every one of them.  But just as he was getting them arranged a small, low, long-bodied, snaky-slim, yellowish beast came gliding by and drove them all clean out of his head.  It was a weasel.  It almost bumped into the Child’s feet before it noticed them.  Then it jumped back, showing its keen teeth in a soundless snarl of its narrow, pointed muzzle, and surveyed the Child with the cruellest little eyes that he had ever even imagined.  The savage eyes stared him full in the face, a red light like a deep-buried spark coming into them, till he thought the creature was going to spring at his throat.  Then gradually the spark died out, as the little furry reassured itself.  The triangular face turned aside.  The working, restless nose sniffed sharply, catching the fresh scent of the two rabbits, and in the next instant the creature was off, in long, noiseless bounds, upon the hot trail.  The Child knew enough of woodcraft to realize at once the meaning of its sudden departure, and he murmured sympathetically in his heart, “Oh, I do hope he won’t catch them!”