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. XLVI A NEW ACQUAINTANCE It is always annoying to be disturbed in the midst of one’s breakfast,—the more so if one has just had a painful scrimmage with a great barred owl whose nest one was trying to rob. It is therefore not surprising that Bobby Lynx looked murderously about him from the limb to which he had leaped at the sound of the splash. It must have been a large animal, he reasoned, to make so much noise; and Bob was after all but a kitten, whose life had thus far been one long adventure from the day he had had it out with Unk Wunk, the porcupine, to his recent falling out with the angry owl. Someone, he felt sure, meant to rob him of his trout, and, unfortunately, in his surprise he had left it on the boulder beside the River.