a quick shot at his head and slightly wounded or stunned him, caught him, and ran proudly back to the house with my prize.  I carried him in my arms; he didn’t struggle to get away or offer to strike me, and when I put him on the floor in front of the kitchen stove, he just rested quietly on his belly as noiseless and motionless as if he were a stuffed specimen on a shelf, held his neck erect, gave no sign of suffering from any wound, and though he was motionless, his small black eyes seemed to be ever keenly watchful.  His formidable bill, very sharp, three or three and a half inches long, and shaped like a pickaxe, was held perfectly level.  But the wonder was that he did not struggle or make the slightest movement.  We had a tortoise-shell cat, an old Tom of great experience, who was so fond of lying under the stove in frosty weather that it was difficult even to poke him out with a broom; but when he saw and smelled that strange big fishy, black and white, speckledy bird, the like of which he had never before seen, he rushed wildly to the farther corner of the kitchen, looked back cautiously and suspiciously, and began to make a careful study of the handsome but dangerous-looking stranger.  Becoming more and more curious and interested, he at length advanced a step or two for a nearer view and nearer smell; and as the wonderful bird kept absolutely motionless, he was encouraged to venture gradually nearer and nearer until within perhaps five or six feet of its breast.  Then the wary loon, not liking Tom’s looks in so near a view, which perhaps recalled to his mind the plundering minks and muskrats he had to fight when they approached his nest, prepared to defend himself by slowly, almost imperceptibly drawing back his long pickaxe bill, and without the slightest fuss or stir held it level and ready just over his tail.  With that dangerous bill drawn so far back out of the way, Tom’s confidence in the stranger’s peaceful intentions seemed almost complete, and, thus encouraged, he at last ventured forward with wondering, questioning eyes and quivering nostrils until he was only eighteen or twenty inches from the loon’s smooth white breast.  When the beautiful bird, apparently as peaceful and inoffensive as a flower, saw that his hairy yellow enemy had arrived at the right distance, the loon, who evidently was a fine judge of the reach of his spear, shot it forward quick as a lightning-flash, in marvelous contrast to the wonderful slowness of the preparatory poising, backward motion.  The aim was true to a hair-breadth.  Tom was struck right in the centre of his forehead, between the eyes.  I thought his skull was cracked.  Perhaps it was.  The sudden astonishment of that outraged cat, the virtuous indignation and wrath, terror, and pain, are far beyond description.  His eyes and screams and desperate retreat told all that.  When the blow was received, he made a noise that I never heard a cat make before or since; an awfully deep, condensed, screechy, explosive Wuck! as he bounced straight