The boy had been idly whittling a stick. As he leaped over the log and rushed to the fawn's rescue, his eyes blazing with fury, he flourished the big knife in his right hand and shifted his grip upon its handle. To his surprise the lynx, crouching upon its victim, remained motionless, teeth bared in an ugly snarl, blood dripping from its jaws. For a moment the boy believed that he was in for a battle, and in the rage that possessed him the prospect filled him with fierce joy. But as a matter of fact it was sheer amazement that paralyzed the lynx temporarily, and when the boy was still ten feet from him he recovered his wits. He bounded three feet to the right, and as though made of India rubber, bounced thence to the edge of the thicket. Whirling in mid-career, the boy hurled the knife at him as he vanished amid the foliage.
Two minutes later the fawn died in the boy's arms, gazing up into his face with large, crystalline, stricken eyes full of vague, questioning wonder. As the light went out of them the boy vowed unceasing relentless war against the murderer. To him the one-eared lynx was no longer Byng, the playful, affectionate, striped-and-spotted kitten of other days. He was the savage, bloody-toothed slaughterer of innocent woods babies. The boy, who had to have a name for everything, renamed him Lynx
