n
agreeable surprise to the farmer's wife. The fox almost brushed against
her as he sprang over the hedge, and she paid to the utmost the penalty
of indiscretion.

After feasting royally on the eggs, the fox took up the dead bird, and
moved slowly away through the trees towards his home. Re-entering the
covert, he was met by a prowling vixen that, in company with her four
young cubs, inhabited an "earth" not many yards away. Reckless through
hunger and maddened by the scent of blood, she attacked him savagely,
bullied him out of the possession of the dead fowl, and bore her prize
away in triumph to her den. The fox endured his ill-treatment with the
submission of a Stoic--he happened to be the pugnacious vixen's mate,
and the sire of her family. Soon recovering from the chastisement, he
set off, and skirted the covert as far as the cottage garden. Finding
the gate of the hen-coop closed, he sprang on the water-butt, climbed to
the roof of the shed, and tried to enter the coop from above; but there,
as at the farm, he feared a trap, and dared not creep beneath the loose
wire netting overhanging the shed. As he jumped from the coop to the
wall of the stye, he caught sight of several rats scampering to their
holes. Lying flat on the wall, he awaited patiently their re-appearance.
At last one of them ventured out beneath the door of the cot, and was
instantly killed. But, much to his chagrin, Reynard found the carcass a
decidedly doubtful tit-bit, and so, having conveyed it gingerly to the
margin of the covert, he scratched a shallow hole among the rotting
leaves, and buried his prey, that, perhaps, its flavour might improve
with keeping. Afterwards, till the sky lightened almost imperceptibly,
and a steel-blue bar, low down beneath the clouds, first signalled the
coming of day, he lay motionless among the undergrowth near a warren in
the dingle. Then an unsuspecting rabbit hopped out into the grass, and
Reynard, his watch rewarded, disappeared with his spoil into the
wilderness of the gorse.

Dawn was breaking over the hills. Blue smoke curled up into the sky from
the lodge cottage at the foot of the tree-clad slope. The door of the
cottage stood wide open, and the scent of the wood-fire hung on the
chill, damp air filling the narrow lane. A blackbird flew into the
apple-tree overlooking the thatch, shook the moisture from his wings,
and cleaned his bright orange bill on a bough. Then his full, reed-like
music floated ov