She was out now for nothing but a
breath of fresh air, she did not intend to stay more than ten minutes, and
she was on the point of returning to the house when a cry from the woods
made her pause.

One might have fancied that some human being was crying out in agony, but
Phyl knew that it was a fox, a fox caught in a trap. She was confirmed in
her knowledge by the barking of its mates; they would be gathered round
the trapped one lending all the help they could--with their voices.

The girl did not pause to think; forgetting that she had no weapon with
which to put the poor beast out of its misery, and no means of freeing it
without being bitten, she started off at a run in the direction of the
sound, entering the woods by a path that led through a grove of hazel;
leaving this path she struck westward swift as an Indian along the road of
the call.

Her mother's people had been used to the wilds, and Phyl had more than a
few drops of tracker blood in her veins; better than that, she had a trace
of the wood instinct that leads a man about the forest and makes him able
to strike a true line to the west or east or north or south without a
compass.

The trees were set rather sparsely here and the moonlight shewed vistas of
withered fern. The wind had fallen, and in the vast silence of the night
this place seemed unreal as a dream. The fox had evidently succeeded in
liberating itself from the trap, for its cries had ceased, cut off all of
a sudden as though by a closing door.

Phyl paused to listen and look around her. Through all the night from
here, from there, came thin traces of sound, threads fretting the silence.
The trotting of a horse a mile away on the Arranakilty road, the bark of a
dog from near the Round House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at
Ross' farm came distinct yet diminished almost to vanishing point. It was
like listening to the country sounds of Lilliput. With these came the
vaguest whisper of flowing water, broken now and again by a little shudder
of wind in the leafless branches of the trees.

"He's out," said Phyl to herself. She was thinking of the fox. She knew
that the trap must be somewhere about and she guessed who had set it.
Rafferty, without a doubt, for only the other day he had been complaining
of the foxes having raided the chickens, but there was no use in hunting
for the thing by this light and without any indication of its exact
whereabouts, so she struck on, determined