delicate feet lightly touching the ground, skimmed silently over the grass and weeds and leaped upon him from the rear. It was a stroke of fortune for the fox. He had picked up the trail of the gator family on the ridge in the swamp and had followed it as fast as he could, hoping to overtake the procession before it reached the water. But this tall whiteand-black bird would furnish sweeter meat than the meat of baby gators; and, big though the bird was, the fox, landing squarely upon the ibis' back, knew how to chop that long neck neatly and effectively from behind.
This was the first manifestation of the luck that was to follow the future king of the river through the first months of his life—those perilous months when, far from being lord of all the water wild folk, he was among the least formidable of them all and was beset on all sides by enemies of many kinds against whom he had no defense except instinct and the cunning that grew in him as he grew.
This cunning must have begun to develop very early. Perhaps there was a hint of it in his behavior on that first day when, as the stricken ibis struggled in the throes of death, the little gator, released from the grip of that cruel bill, did not make straight for the water as blind instinct might have directed. Had
