Looking
down to the ledge he saw Cyril was no longer its sole occupant.
Crouched at the opening of a crevice, not ten feet from the
unseeing child, was something bulky and sinister;-- a mere
menacing blur against the darker rock.
Crawling home to its lair, supper-less and frantic with hunger,
after a day of fruitless hunting through the dead forest world, a
giant wildcat had been stirred from its first fitful slumber in
the ledge's crevice by the impact of the child upon the heap of
leaves. The human scent had startled the creature and it had
slunk farther back into the crevice. The more so when the bark
and inimical odor of a big dog were added to the shattering of
the ravine's solitude.
Then the dog had gone away. Curiosity,--the besetting trait of
the cat tribe,--had mastered the crevice's dweller. The wildcat
had wriggled noiselessly forward a little way, to learn what
manner of enemy had invaded its lair. And, peering out, it had
beheld a spindling child; a human atom, without strength or
weapon.
Fear changed to fury in the bob-cat's feline heart.
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