After a little more persuasion, he cooled down and accompanied us, and we all heard his story. It appeared that a week before he and one of his brothers had visited a Spanish chestnut they knew of at some distance from their home, which was in a large wood about a mile away, when, without the slightest warning, a great cat had sprung out of a patch of dead bracken close by, and with two quick swings of her terrible paws bowled them both over. Our new acquaintance owed his life to the fact that he had seen the enemy coming just in time to duck, and, consequently, had received the full force of the blow upon his neck instead of his head. But even so he had been stunned, and had recovered his senses only in time to see the savage beast running rapidly away among the underbrush with the dead body of his brother swinging limp between her powerful jaws. Knowing that she would come back for him, he had summoned all his remaining energies, and succeeded in climbing into a pollard oak and hiding in a knot-hole in its spreading top. From there he watched the robber return, moving noiselessly across the dead grass and leaves on velvet-cushioned paws; noted the grey coat, stiff and coarse, the short tail, broad head, and small, close-rounded ears; had seen her search snuffing among the dead leaves, moving round and round in impatient circles, and shivered in his terror. But fortune was good to him, for after a time, which seemed endless, the cat, tired of her vain search, had at last turned, and with tail straight up padded softly back the way she had come. But it was not until nearly sunset that the wounded squirrel had made shift to crawl home, sore and aching, and there he had lain for two whole days. Alas! the tale of his sorrows was not yet told. On the third day his mother went out about midday to bring in some food, and never came back! Towards evening his father had gone to search for her, and returned at dark with the terrible tidings that the same stealthy fiend had captured her too. He had found some gnawed bones and her brush—that was all! By this time the whole wood was in a state of panic. Rabbits, pheasants, and squirrels, all had suffered alike. The cat, it was said, was only one of a family who had taken up their abode in an immense hollow hornbeam in the centre of the wood. A regular reign of terror set in, and our new friend, whose name was Cob, together with his father and his sister, the only survivors of the family, had decided to emigrate before worse happened.