he got such a gashing that he went homeward howling with pain.
After making a short double, a loop and a baulk in case the dog
should come back, Molly returned to find that Rag in his eagerness
was standing bolt upright and craning his neck to see the sport.

This disobedience made her so angry that she struck him with her
hind foot and knocked him over in the mud.

One day as they fed on the near clover field a redtailed hawk came
swooping after them. Molly kicked up her hind legs to make fun of
him and skipped into the briers along one of their old pathways,
where of course the hawk could not follow. It was the main path
from the Creekside Thicket to the Stove-pipe brushpile. Several
creepers had grown across it, and Molly, keeping one eye on the
hawk, set to work and cut the creepers off. Rag watched her, then
ran on ahead, and cut some more that were across the path. "That's
right," said Molly, "always keep the runways clear, you will need
them often enough. Not wide, but clear. Cut everything like a
creeper across them and some day you will find you have cut a
snare." "A what?" asked Rag, as he scratched his right ear with his
left hind foot.

"A snare is something that looks like a creeper, but it doesn't grow
and it's worse than all the hawks in the world," said Molly,
glancing at the now far-away red-tail, "for there it hides night and
day in the runway till the chance to catch you comes."

"I don't believe it could catch me," said Rag, with the pride of
youth as he rose on his heels to rub his chin and whiskers high up
on a smooth sapling. Rag did not know he was doing this, but his