Thus Yan put in many hours making drawings of things about the edge of the pond.

[Illustration:  Kingfisher]

As he sat one day in stillness a Minnow leaped from the water and caught a Fly.  Almost immediately a Kingfisher that had been shooting past stopped in air, hovered, and darting downward, came up with a Minnow in his beak, flew to a branch to swallow its prey, but no sooner got there when a Chicken-hawk flashed out of a thick tree, struck the Kingfisher with both feet and bore him downward to the bank—­in a moment would have killed him, but a long, brown creature rushed from a hole in the bank and sprang on the struggling pair, to change the scene in a twinkling.  The three stragglers separated, the Hawk to the left, the Kingfisher to the right, the Minnow flopped back into the pool, and the Mink was left on the shore with a mouthful of feathers and looking very foolish.  As it stood shaking the down from its nose another animal came gliding down through the shrubbery to the shore—­the old gray Cat.  The Mink wrinkled up his nose, showed two rows of sharp teeth and snarled in a furious manner, but backed off under a lot of roots.  The Cat laid down her ears; the fur on her back and tail stood up; she crouched a little, her eyes blazing and the end of her tail twitching, and she answered the snarling of the Mink with a low growl.  The Mink was evidently threatening “sudden death” to the Cat, and Pussy evidently was not much impressed.  The Mink retreated farther under the roots till nothing but the green glowing of his eyes was to be seen, and the Cat, coming forward, walked calmly by his hiding-place and went about her business.  The snarling under the root died away, and as soon as his enemy was gone the Mink dived into the water and was lost to view.

These two animals had a second meeting, as Yan had the luck to witness from his watching-place.  He had heard the “plop” of a deft plunge, and looked in time only to see the spreading rings near the shore.  Then the water was ruffled far up in the pond.  A brown spot showed and was gone.  A second appeared, to vanish as the first had done.  Later, a Muskrat crawled out on the shore, waddled along for twenty feet, then, plunging in, swam below, came up at the other bank, and crawled under a lot of overhanging roots.  A minute later the Mink appeared, his hair all plastered close till he looked like a four-legged Snake.  He landed where the Muskrat had come out, followed the trail so that it was lost, then galloped up and down the shore, plunged in, swam across, and beat about the other shore.  At last he struck the trail and followed.  Under the root there were sounds of a struggle, the snarling of the mink, and in two or three minutes he appeared dragging out the body of the Muskrat.  He sucked its blood and was eating the brains when again the gray Cat came prowling up the edge of the pond and, not ten feet off, stood face to face with the Mink, as she had done before.