of his cassena, but the heron saw her in time and spent the night in another bush. Mere chance gave her the opportunity which she had so often sought vainly.
She was lying half asleep, about an hour before sunset, in her bed near the eagle's cedar. Suddenly the heron, returning to his perch earlier than usual and striding through the high grass with less than his accustomed caution, stepped almost upon her. In an instant her jaws clamped upon his long leg just above the toes.
With a hoarse cry the heron sprang upward, his uninjured wing beating the air and buffeting the fox's head. But those long, strong jaws held fast, crunched tighter and tighter on the black slender leg, then with a sudden effort crushed: the bone. The eagle, watching from his perch, his yellow eyes glowing more fiercely than ever now, saw the fox lurch awkwardly forward, striking with her forepaw to beat the big blue-gray bird to the ground. He saw the heron, forced backward so that he was half standing, half sitting, stab fiercely again and again at the fox's face with his bill, his long neck thrusting like a striking snake, his straight, javelinlike beak darting in and out, in and out with triphammer swiftness.
The eagle's head dropped lower; his wide dark wings unfolded. A moment he poised on his perch.
