p there took their animals home. In all respects the occurrence was
most disagreeable--a truly black Monday with us. The old Squire said
little, except that he wanted the right thing done.

For an hour or more after we went to bed that night Addison and I lay
talking about the affair, but we could think of no explanation of the
strange occurrence and at last fell asleep. The next morning, however,
the solution of the mystery flashed into Addison's mind. As we were
dressing at five o'clock, he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed in a
queer voice:

"I know what killed those colts!"

"What?" I asked.

"That fox bed!"

For a whole minute we stood there, half dressed, looking at each other
in consternation. Without doubt, the blame for the loss of the colts was
on us. What the consequences might be we hardly dared to think.

"What shall we do?" I exclaimed.

Addison looked alarmed as he answered in a low tone, "Keep quiet--till
we think it over."

"We must tell the old Squire," I said.

"But there's Willis," Addison reminded me. "It was Willis who made the
bed, you know."

The old clearing was, as I have said, a great place for foxes; and the
preceding fall Addison and I, wishing to add to the fund we were
accumulating for our expenses when we should go away to college, had
entered into a kind of partnership with Willis Murch to do a little
trapping up there. Addison and I were little more than silent partners,
however; Willis actually tended the traps.

But there are years, as every trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox
into a steel trap by any amount of artfulness. What the reason is, I do
not know, unless some fox that has been trapped and that has escaped
passes the word round among all the other foxes. There were plenty of
foxes coming to the clearing; we never went up there without seeing
fresh signs about the old barn. Yet Willis got no fox.

What is more strange, it was so all over New England that fall; foxes
kept clear of steel traps. As the fur market was quick, certain city
dealers began sending out offers of "fox pills" to trappers whom they
had on their lists. Willis received one of those letters and showed it
to us. The fox pills were, of course, poison and were to be inclosed in
little balls of tallow and laid where foxes were known to come.

Trappers were advised to use them but were properly cautioned how and
where to expose them. After picking up one of the pills, a fox would
make for t