This time there was no fuss about it, because the slaughter was accomplished quite silently, and the mother did not happen to see.

After this there would never be more than two or three days go by without the sudden disappearance of one or another of the litter, which, after all, kept the burrow from becoming too crowded.

The youngsters were getting so big by now that their parents began to lose all interest in them.

It became time for them to be weaned.

But as the interest of the owls had been increasing as that of the parents diminished, it happened by this time that there was not one left to wean.