them an hour or so later, after he had gone back to the plantation house and returned with his big black-and-tan hound, but the dog killed two of the three before the boy could get to them. The third owed its life to the fact that, baby though it was, it made a brave fight against its huge foe. It was badly chewed about the head and ears and was covered with blood when the boy pulled the dog out of the lynx den in a great hollow oak stump and rescued the sole survivor of the family; but it was still full of fight as he wrapped it in his hunting coat, and once or twice during the walk back to the plantation house it made its claws felt even through that thick covering.
As soon as its wounds had healed, the striped and spotted bobtailed kitten throve amazingly. From a diet of milk it passed with evident relish to a diet of meat, and by the time it was three months old its size and strength already proved it to be an exceptional specimen of its kind. The boy kept it in a large wire-covered inclosure in the yard under a wide-spreading live oak and fed it himself with the greatest care. He knew that the bay lynx, or wildcat, is not easily tamed and that even when taken very young its savage instincts are always close to the surface. But the boy had a way of his own with animals, and although the young lynx hated and feared all the other members of the family and all
