to the frowning, threatening blackness of the woods. He could
understand it all, that wolf. Indeed, it was written there quite
plainly for such as could read. He read, and he passed on. He did not
follow Gulo's bloody trail. No--oh, dear, no! Probably, quite
probably, he had met Gulo the Indomitable before, and--was not that
enough?




II

BLACKIE AND CO.

Blackie flung himself into the fight like a fiery fiend cut from coal.
He did not know what the riot was about--and cared less. He only knew
that the neutrality of his kingdom was broken. Some one was fighting
over his borders; and when fighting once begins, you never know where
it may end! (This is an axiom.) Therefore he set himself to stop it
at once, lest worse should befall.

He found two thrushes apparently in the worst stage of d.t.'s. One was
on his back; the other was on the other's chest. Both were in a
laurel-bush, half-way up, and apparently they kept there, and did not
fall, through a special dispensation of Providence. Both fought like
ten devils, _and both sang_. That was the stupefying part, the song.
It was choked, one owns; it was inarticulate, half-strangled with rage,
but still it _was_ song.

A cock-chaffinch and a hen-chaffinch were perched on two twigs higher