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We woke to the blustering music of the beasts, and thought on the possible approach of bear, panther, California lion, wild cat, 'coon, and polecat; but thought on it with composure, for the hounds were famous hunters, and there was a whole arsenal within reach. We were waked at 6:30, and come down to the front "stoop" of the homestead.
The cries of a young pheasant in distress, running through some thick bramble patches and clumps of hazel, suggested that some carnivorous animal was near, and on stepping into the thicket a large polecat was seen galloping through the brushwood.
That poor boy, sitting crouched there in the corner, with a broken jaw, and just so much of human feeling as one may suppose a polecat to have, caught in a gin, is that same baby that we saw Ellen Lee nursing on the door-step in the rain, when our poor Mary came upon her on one wild night in Exeter. Base-born, workhouse-bred!
There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish-register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age.
But the male genet was not ill, or, if he was, he was moving from place to place too quickly to give the fact away; and by the time he shot up a tree, like a long, rippling, cream and tawny-dappled, banded line, he left that polecat considerably redder than when he found her, and weak, as if she had been bitten by leeches.
Well, just as he has the cat and the mouse-trap for you, if you become too indiscreet, so he has the fox and the crow and the polecat and the marten and the stork and, above all, the owl for me. You can't imagine what a terribly cunning enemy the owl is. One simply can't hear him flying. One can't see him either, for he only comes at night and his colours are dark.
And then the polecat took her, leaping with unexpected agility, and pulling her down out of limitless freedom and safety. There was just a rush, a snap, a wild-bird squawk, and down the pair went, to the accompaniment of furiously fluttering wings and in a cloud of feathers. She had made a slight mistake in her calculations, that peewit, a matter of perhaps a quarter of a second, but enough.
Men called him polecat, apropos of nothing about him, apparently, for he had no connection with poles or cats; or foumart, apropos and you wouldn't have needed to be told if you had got to leeward of him just then of his very unroselike smell that is, fou foul, mart marten, his nearest relation; or, again, fitchett, as our forefathers termed him. But never mind. What's in a name, anyway?
Is she handsom? Fran. Oh, what an Ague shakes my Heart, handsom! alas, no, dread Sir; what shou'd such a deform'd Polecat as I do with a handsom Wife? Car. Is she young? Fran. Young, what shou'd such an old doting Coxcomb as I do with a young Wife? Pox on him for a Heathen Whoremaster. Car. Old is she then? Fran. Ay, very old, an't please your Gloriousness. Car. Is she not capable of Love? Fran.
Unfortunately for himself, the fox had made a slight miscalculation. With a scream of rage and pain, the polecat for such the creature proved to be turned on the aggressor, and instantly fastened its formidable teeth, like a steel trap, on his muzzle.
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