"This is a true picture of the ermine when excited or angry; when at rest, and in certain conditions of his fur, there are few more beautiful, harmless, innocent-looking creatures. Let one of the animals on which he preys approach, however, and instantly he becomes a demon. In the economy of nature he often serves a very useful purpose. In many regions field mice are destructive. The ermine is their deadliest foe. A rat will fight a man, if cornered, but it gives up at once in abject terror when confronted by the large weasel. This arch-enemy has a pride in his hunting, and when taking up his quarters in a barn will collect in one place all the rats and mice he kills. Sometimes a hundred or more have been found together as the result of two or three nights' work. The ermine hunts, however, both by day and night, and climbs trees with great facility. He is by no means shy, and one has been known to try to kill chickens in a coop when a man was standing near him. Hunger was not his motive, for he had destroyed dozens of fowls the night before. The ermine has been used successfully as a ferret. Having first filed the creature's teeth down, so that it could not kill the game, a gentleman secured twelve live rabbits in one forenoon. "But it's getting late, and time we started tentward, and yet I'm not through even the list of quadrupeds that may have dwelt in our old tenement. There are four species of bats to be mentioned, besides moles and shrews, that would burrow in its roots if they are as hollow as the branches. There are thirteen species of birds, including several very interesting families of woodpeckers, that would live in a tree like that, not to speak of tree-toads, salamanders, brown tree-lizards, insects and slugs innumerable, and black-snakes--" "Snakes?" interrupted Burt, incredulously. "Yes, snakes. I once put my hand in a hole for high-holders' eggs, and a big black-snake ran down my back, but not inside of my coat, however." "Please say nothing more about snakes," cried Amy; and she rose decisively, adding, in a low tone: "Come, Gertrude, let us go. The tenants of the old tree that we've heard about may be very interesting to naturalists, but some of them are no more to my taste than the people in the slums of London." "You have made our blood run cold with horrors--an agreeable sensation, however, to-day," said Burt, also rising. "Your ermine out-Herods Herod. By the way, is not the fur of this pitiless beast worn by the highest dignitaries of the legal profession?" and he hastened after the girls. CHAPTER XLIV "BUT HE RISKED HIS LIFE?"