seems almost upon it; then as quick as a wink, the little tail flies up and Mr. Prairie-Dog is far away into the earth by the time Gip has fairly reached the door of his house. Then every dog in the town redoubles its chattering, and it seems as if a ripple of low laughter ran through the company at the disappointment of their enemy. But Gip, after ramming his head as far as it can be forced into the burrow, draws it out with a sniff of regret and then is off again, full tilt, after the next little saucy rascal that sits on a neighboring sandheap, making merry over his perplexity. Again he almost has one; the prairie-dog sits unmoved until Gip comes within a yard of the hole, and then it vanishes. It seems a very narrow escape for it; but it is always just so narrow, and yet they always escape. As long as man and dog are in sight they keep up their shrill din, like the chattering of a thousand monkeys; and as long as we are in their village, Gip flies madly from hole to hole, always just so eager and hopeful, though he has been chasing them all his life and has never yet caught one. [Illustration: HEAD OF THE WAPITI.] The town of the prairie-dogs is in a beautiful situation. It lies in the broadest part of the park, surrounded by the highest and grandest of the mountains. A few days ago, as I was riding through it in the early morning, I saw an animal some distance ahead running hard toward the woods. Thinking it was a wolf or coyote, I paid little attention at first, but looking closer, I saw plainly that I was mistaken, for its legs were short, and its body long and heavy. It went springing over the grass with long bounds, and its coat of fur was grayish, shading to yellow brown; and I knew it must be one of the great panthers which are generally called mountain lions. I had never before met one, though their great, round footprints, as large as tea-plates, had often been seen in the soft snow the last winter. Like other cats, they like to sleep in the day and to prowl at night. Gip took a long, wistful look at the lion; but he is a small dog, and a very wise one, and he knew his life would be short if he should approach very near to that great creature, so he went back to his hard work with the prairie-dogs, and left me to go galloping off alone for a nearer view of the lion. But Monkey dislikes wild beasts quite as much as Gip, and would never willingly have carried me very near to a beast of prey, even if the lion had not run up into the rocks on the mountain-side before I had seen it very clearly. Beside the rough confusion of rocks into which the panther ran, there was a gentle grassy slope which seemed to extend to the top of the mountain.