Now Twinkly’s neighbor Bobby was a sadder but a wiser young lynx kitten before ever Whoo Lee the owl had finished with him. For Bobby had climbed to the nest in the pine tree, rash fellow!

It but put the finishing touches on his lesson when the bark to which he was clinging with his one free paw gave way beneath his weight and sent him tumbling.

Not that Bobby minded, after the first shock of falling. Like all members of the cat family, large and small, he managed to double into a somersault in mid-air and so came down right side up, more hurt in his feelings than anywhere else. Indeed, he twice broke his fall by catching at passing limbs, and he need not have come to the ground at all, save that he preferred not to occupy the same tree as Whoo Lee.

In fact, no sooner had Bobby reached all fours in safety than he went slinking off through the shadows, as fast as ever his heavy feet could carry him.

After a time he sat down to wash his face and lick the places where the owl had clawed him. Then he realized that he was very, very thirsty, and hungry to boot, and he made his way to Pollywog Pond.

Here, unfortunately, he found Mother Red Fox and Frisky Fox and the other four Fox youngsters just finishing a lesson in catching frogs, and he was in no mood for meeting any one of that family.

So on and on he crept, through the ravine and on down to Rapid River. Here his mother had once brought him to teach him to catch trout, and here, after drinking deep of the chill waters, he crouched along a boulder to await the dawn.

At the first faint flush of pink along the sky, the first lightening of the shadows of the forest, and the first wee notes of awakening warblers, Bobby stretched one paw out over the water’s edge, claws set for a sudden swoop,—and waited silently.

For so long that Bobby all but went to sleep, his half-shut eyes could see no gleam of speckled scales in the silver water,—not, at least, within the reach of the waiting paw,—though that paw hung over the rim of one of the deepest pools, where trout were likeliest. The fish had to come pretty near the surface for him to strike successfully.

Then suddenly his mouth began to water, for a great fat beauty was swimming straight towards him. Bob’s eyes gleamed hungrily, his whiskers twitched with nervousness, and the green muscles tensed along his ready forearm.

Then a quick dart of his barbed paw, a flash of silver, and Bob had squared himself with a growl to as juicy a breakfast as anyone could ask.

Great ravenous bites he took, growling as he crunched, to warn all comers that a hungry lynx is not the person from whom it would be wise to try to steal.

The next instant there was a resounding splash in the stream behind him, and Bob in his surprise jumped full three feet in the air, landing on a limb of the nearest tree.