All thoughts of the weasel and the rabbits, however, were speedily driven from his mind, for at this moment he noticed a fat, yellowish grub, with a chestnut-colored head, crawling up his sleeve.  He hated grubs, and wondered anxiously if it had any unpleasant design of crawling down his neck.  He squirmed inwardly at the idea.  But just as he was coming to the conclusion that that was something he’d never be able to stand, a most unexpected ally came to his rescue.  With a blow that almost made him jump out of his jacket, something lit on the fat grub.  It was a big black hornet, with white bands across its shining body.  She gave the grub a tiny prick with the tip of her envenomed sting, which caused it to roll up into a tight ball and lie still.  Then straddling it, and holding it in place with her front pair of legs, she cut into it with her powerful mandibles and began to suck its juices.  The Child’s nose wrinkled in spite of himself at sight of this unalluring banquet, but he stared with all eyes.  There was something terrifying to him in the swiftness and efficiency of the great hornet.  Presently the grub, not having received quite a big enough dose of its captor’s anaesthetic, came to under the devouring jaws and began to lash out convulsively.  Another touch of the medicine in the hornet’s tail, however, promptly put a stop to that, and once more it tightened up into an unresisting ball.  Then straddling it again firmly, and handling it cleverly with its front legs as a raccoon might handle a big apple, she bit into it here and there, sucking eagerly with a quick, pumping motion of her body.  The fat ball got smaller and smaller, till soon it was very little bigger than an ordinary sweet pea.  The hornet turned it over and over impatiently, to see if anything more was to be got out of it; then she spurned it aside, and bounced into the air with a deep hum.  She had certainly been very amusing, but the Child drew a breath of relief when she was gone.  He had caught the copper-red flicker of her sting, as it barely touched the victim, and it seemed to him like a jet of live flame.

When the hornet was gone the Child began once more to remember that little stick in the soft moss beneath him.  How had he ever forgotten it?  He decided that he must have been sitting on it for hours and hours.  But just as it was beginning fairly to burn its way into his flesh, a queer little rushing sound close at his side brought his heart into his throat.  It was such a vicious, menacing little sound.  Glancing down, he saw that a tiny wood-mouse had darted upon a big brown-winged butterfly and captured it.  The big wings flapped pathetically for a few seconds; but the mouse bit them off, to save herself the bother of lagging useless material home to her burrow.  She was so near that the Child could have touched her by reaching out his hand.  But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a rotten stump.  Less, in fact, for she might have tried to gnaw into him if he had been a rotten stump, in the hope of finding some wood-grubs.