side he fell to the ground fainting from loss of blood.

The rays did not have much time to sit there pitying him. Some distance behind the man the panther came jumping along with great leaps to catch him. The big wildcat stopped on the bank, and gave a great roar; but up and down the river the rays went calling; “The Panther! The Panther!” and they gathered together near the shore to attack him if he tried to cross.

The panther looked up and down the stream, and finally he spied the man lying helpless on the island. He, too, was badly wounded and dripping with blood; but he was determined to eat the man at any cost. With another great howl, he leaped into the water.

Almost instantly, however, he felt as though a hundred pins and needles were sticking into his paws. You see, the rays were trying to block the ford, and were stinging him with the stingers in their tails. He gave one big jump back to the river bank and stood there roaring, and holding one paw up in the air because it hurt him to step on it. After a moment he looked down into the water and saw that it was all black and muddy. The rays were coming in great crowds and stirring up the bottom of the river.

“Ah hah!” said the panther: “Ah hah! I see! It is you, you bad, wicked ray fish! It was you who gave me all those stings! Well now, just get out of the way!”

“We will not get out of the way,” answered the rays.

“Away, I tell you!” said the panther.

“We won’t!” said the rays. “He is a good man. It is not right to kill him!”

“He gave me these wounds you see,” said the panther. “I must punish him!”

“And you gave him his wounds, too,” said the rays. “But that is all a matter for you folks in the woods to settle. So long as this man is on the river, he is in our province and we intend to protect him!”

“Get out of my way!” said the panther.

“Not never!” said the rays. You see, the rays had never been to school; and they said “not never” and “not nothing” the way children sometimes do and never ought to do, not never!

“Well, we’ll see!” said the panther, with another great roar; and he ran up the bank to get a start for one great jump. The panther understood that the rays were packed close in along the shore; and he figured that if he could jump away out into the stream he would get beyond them and their stingers, and finally reach the wounded man on the island.

But some of the rays saw what he was going to do, and they began to shout to one another:

“Out to mid-stream! Out to mid-stream! He’s going to jump! He’s going to jump!”

The panther did succeed in making a very long leap, and for some seconds after he struck the water he felt no pain. He gave a great roar of delight, thinking he had deceived his enemies. But then, all of a sudden, sting here and sting there, in front, in back, on his sides! The rays were upon him again, driving their poisonous stingers into his skin. For a moment, the panther thought it was as easy to go forward as back, and he kept on. But the rays were now all over along the island; so the panther turned and went back to the shore he had left.

He was now about done. He just had to lie down on his side to keep the bottoms of his feet off the ground; and his stomach went up and down as he breathed deeply from fatigue and pain. He was growing dizzy, also, because the poison from the stings was getting into his brain.

The rays were not satisfied, however. They kept crowding up along the shore because they knew that panthers never go alone, but always with a mate. This mate would come, and they would again have to defend the ford.

And so it was. Soon the she-panther came down roaring through the bushes to rescue her