the hospitality they
lavished upon appropriate occasions of weddings, christenings and the
neverending procession of days of patron saints. Subtle, romantic,
circumscribed by alien environment, they recognized in him a kindred
spirit and opened their hearts wide to him. Terry, his ardent young
pastor--Dr. Mather--and Father Jennings were the only northsiders whom
they called friends. None of the three had been named on the town's
"Committee on Americanization." ...

The priest roused from his revery and for a long time contemplated the
quiet, thoughtful lad who sat beside him. Gradually a deep concern
spread across his comfortably aged features, a presentiment of
impending loss shadowed his pleasant eyes. He reached out to lay his
hand on Terry's forearm.

"Dick," he said, "there is plenty for you to do right here in
Crampville--what is this I hear about your going to the Philippines?"

CHAPTER II

TERRY DECIDES

Christmas Eve, the large snowflakes drifted slowly down out of a
windless sky. The dusk was cheerful with the sound of sleigh bells
that announced the arrival or departure of last-hour shoppers.

Terry, at his desk in the great living room, surveyed the finished
trophy happily. It was an unusually black and lustrous pelt. He buried
his face in the silky mat a moment, then drew out paper and pen, and
wrote:

DEANE-DEAR:--

Some three years ago a mother fox suffered that this one
might be born: denied herself food that he might satisfy his
urgent little appetite as he grew bigger and stronger. When
he was big enough he left her and forgot her--she may have
suffered then, too.

He lived as foxes do. Things died that he might eat;
rabbits, pheasants, chickens, field-mice. He stalked all
things less strong and clever than himself. A cruel cycle,
but it is the law of the wild, something that you and I
cannot alter.

He enjoyed the summers best, with their longer days, fuller
larders, sweet wood odors, long naps in the cool shadows of
the thicket. But winter came, with its hardships and its
cold, a cold that little foxes feel the same as you and I.
But it was this cold that stimulated and silkened his fur,
made it this wondrous, prized thing.

Then I came, and he ceased to be what he was--a hunter of
smaller, weaker things--and became what you see here: a
finer thing--a token. Your kind heart n