exposing his rear rather than his front. "Come if you dare," he
says, and his attitude makes even the farm-dog pause. After a few
encounters of this kind, and if you entertain the usual hostility
towards him, your mode of attack will speedily resolve itself into
moving about him in a circle, the radius of which will be the exact
distance at which you can hurl a stone with accuracy and effect.

He has a secret to keep and knows it, and is careful not to betray
himself until he can do so with the most telling effect. I have
known him to preserve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap,
and look the very picture of injured innocence, manoeuvring
carefully and deliberately to extricate his foot from the grasp of
the naughty jaws. Do not by any means take pity on him, and lend a
helping hand!

How pretty his face and head! How fine and delicate his teeth, like
a weasel's or a cat's! When about a third grown, he looks so well
that one covets him for a pet. He is quite precocious, however and
capable, even at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to
your sense of smell.

No animal is more cleanly in his habits than he. He is not an
awkward boy who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his
flesh nor his fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most
silent creature known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have
observed, save a diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by
beating your hand with a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has
discovered his retreat in the stone fence. He renders himself
obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for hens' eggs and young
poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and at plundering hen-roosts an