He was spared the very last and worst pangs—for that, at least, we may be thankful. On the last day of his life he sat under a beech-tree, weak and weary and faint. He could not remember when he had eaten. His coat of hair and quills was as thick and bushy as ever, and outwardly he had hardly changed at all, but under his skin there was little left but bones. And as he sat there and wished that he was dead—if such a wish can ever come to a wild animal—the Angel of Mercy came, in the shape of a man with a revolver in his pistol pocket—a man who liked to kill things.
"A porky!" he said. "Guess I'll shoot him, just for fun."
The Porcupine saw him coming and knew the danger; and for a moment the old love of life came back as strong as ever, and he gathered his feeble strength for one last effort, and started up the tree. He was perhaps six feet from the ground when the first report came.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" Four shots, as fast as the self-cocking revolver could pour the lead into his body. The Porky stopped climbing. For an instant he hung motionless on the side of the tree, and then his forepaws let go, and he swayed backward and fell to the ground. And that was the end of the Porcupine.
THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON
HIS name was Mahng, and the story which I am about to relate is the story of his matrimonial career—or at least of a portion of it.
One snowy autumn night, three years ago, he was swimming on the Glimmerglass in company with his first wife—one of the first, that is. There may possibly have been others before her, but if so I wasn't acquainted with them. It was a fine evening—especially for loons. There was no wind, and the big, soft flakes came floating lazily down to lose themselves in the quiet lake. The sky, the woods, and the shores were all blotted out; and the loons reigned alone, king and queen of a dim little world of leaden water and falling snow. And right royally they swam their kingdom, with an air as if they thought God had made the Glimmerglass for their especial benefit. Perhaps He had.