"I should think not!" murmured the Babe, looking longingly over the stream to where the wet slide glistened in the sun, and wishing that he might try it without any regard whatever to the seat of his little trousers. "Taking it all together it was a pretty jolly life, I can tell you, there in the sweet-smelling, shadowy woods and sunny waters. Then one day all at once, as quick as falling off a log, everything was changed." Uncle Andy paused to relight his pipe. After a few seconds the Babe's impatience got the better of him; and before he could stop himself he blurted out "Why?" The moment he had spoken he knew it was a fool question to ask, and he flushed. But to his grateful relief Uncle did not seem to hear. "A hunter from the city came that way. He had a good eye, a repeating rifle, and no imagination whatever. With the luck that sometimes comes to those fellows, he was sitting under a tree near the bank, staring across at the otter-slide (which did not mean anything whatever or suggest anything to him, but was merely a strip of bare clay), when the otter family came to slide. The father started down. It was most interesting--so the stranger under the tree, who was as spry as a sparrowhawk, shot instantly; and the otter came down in a crumpled heap. The mother might have escaped; but for just one second she hesitated, glancing round to see if her little ones were out of danger. That second was enough for the smart shot across the water. She dropped. It was good shooting, of course. The two little ones, horrified by the spiteful noise, and quite unable to understand what had happened, shrank away into some thick bushes and lay very still, waiting for their mother to come and tell them the danger was past." "And she could never come!" murmured the Babe thoughtfully. "Well, she didn't," snorted Uncle Andy, the discourager of sentiment. Fairly reeking with sentiment himself, at heart, he disliked all manifestation of it in himself or others. He liked it left to the imagination. "They never stirred for an hour or more," he went on. "Then at last they stole out and began looking everywhere for those lost parents. All about the slide they hunted--among the bushes at the top, in the water and the rushes at the bottom--but they found nothing. For the man had come in his canoe and carried off his victims.