move for some time. Foxes had been known to come back again more
suddenly than they went.

At last he flew to the earth, but even then he did so as silently as
his noisy wings would let him; and he did not announce the fact with a
half-crow, as the others had done. Very circumspectly he slipped off
through the undergrowth, by a series of little crouching runs, stopping
every now and then to freeze and listen.

Soon he came to one of those open, beautiful, grass-covered "rides"
with which keepers intersect pheasant-coverts. He stopped dead on the
edge of it, himself invisible among the drooping, leaning, old-gold
bracken. The "ride" was full of wood-people, for here had been
scattered that corn which Gaiters intended the pheasants to feed upon.
Indeed, there were about ten pheasants, hens and young cocks of the
year, doing exactly what they were intended to do. Also, there were
some half-dozen softly-tinged, blue-gray wood-pigeons, and one cheeky
jay--whose wing-patches rivaled the perfection of the blue sky
above--doing their best in a quiet sort of way to help the pheasants,
which they were not intended to do, by any manner of means.

The old cock-pheasant slid across the "ride" after a bit, low as a
crouching rat. He had no business there this day. His mind was still
alert with suspicion. Moreover, his father had been a cunning old cock
who had managed, by ways that were dark, to keep out of the game-bag
for years, too. The taint, as Gaiters would have called it, had been
passed on to him.

He made for the open edge of the covert, and he was mighty careful
about doing that even. He felt that air and plenty of horizon were
necessary to his well-being, after the disturbing vision of Gaiters and
Co., so unnaturally busy, hurrying through the dawn.

Now, it is quite remarkable how much you can see from the edge of a
pheasant-covert without being seen yourself. Keepers know that, but do
not give the fact away. The ground sloped away in two open grass
fields, a hedge dividing them, and it was within about the longitude
and the latitude of where that hedge met the covert that our old friend
maneuvered.

The climate about there seemed to suit him admirably. True, good food
was not strewn in plenty just where he could most easily see it. He
had to look for his acorns or his beechmast by the good old
domestic-fowl plan of scratching among the leaves; roots also he was
forced to scratch for; and the noisy mi