CHAPTER VI.
THE MOUNTAIN LION.
One morning, as Mrs.Woods sat in her door picking over some red whortleberries which she had gathered in the timber the day before, a young cow came running into the yard, as if for protection.

Mrs.Woods started up, and looked in the direction from which the animal had come running, but saw nothing to cause the alarm.
The cow looked backward, and lowed.

Mrs.Woods set down her dish of red berries, took her gun, and went out toward the timber where the cow had been alarmed.
There was on the edge of the timber a large fir that the shingle-maker had felled when he first built his house or shack, but had not used, owing to the hardness of the grain.

It lay on the earth, but still connected with its high stump, forming a kind of natural fence.

Around it were beds of red phlox, red whortleberry bushes, and wild sunflowers.
The horny stump and fallen tree had been made very interesting to Mrs.
Woods in her uneventful life by a white squirrel that often had appeared upon it, and made a pretty picture as it sat eating in the sun, its head half covered with its bushy tail.