t impossible, she had lain down,
with wildly beating heart, on the floor of her hiding place.

Her senses seemed to have forsaken her. Had she dreamed? Often, during
the warm, quiet days of a bygone summer, while lying curled in a cosy
litter of dry grass-bents--which she had neatly arranged by turning
round and round, and with her sensitive black muzzle pressing or lifting
into shape each refractory twig--she had dreamed of mouse-hunting and
rabbit-catching; her body had moved, her limbs twitched, her ears
pricked forward, and her nostrils quivered as the delightful incidents
of past expeditions were recalled. And when, with a start, she had
awakened, as some venturesome rabbit frisked by her lair, or a nervous
blackbird, startled by her movements, made the woodlands ring with news
of his discovery, she had retained for a moment the impressions of her
vivid dreams. But never in her sleep had she been haunted by such a
bewildering sense of mingled dread and anger, such an awful apprehension
of the presence of men and hounds, as that which had recently possessed
her. Now, however, all was mysteriously tranquil; the full-toned clamour
of the hounds and the sharp, snarling bark of the terriers had ceased;
no longer was she confined and jostled in the stuffy, evil-smelling sack
that yielded to, and yet restrained, her every frantic effort to regain
liberty. Her heart still beat violently, as though at any moment it
might break; and she crept back towards the entrance, where she might
breathe the free, fresh air.

Suddenly she realised, to the full, that the day's bitter experiences
were not a dream--the scent of the human hand remained on her brush, her
fur was damp and matted with meal-dust, and, alas! her little ones were
missing from her side. She was furious now; at all risks she would
venture forth on the long, straight journey back towards home; her
helpless cubs might still be somewhere under the bushes--perchance in
sore need of warmth and food, and whining for their dam.

With every mothering instinct quickened, the vixen crept down the
slanting passages in the direction of a faint moonlight glimmer beyond.
Reaching the end of the tunnel, she, in her impetuosity, thrust her
muzzle into a mass of prickles--the "earth" had been stopped with a
branch of gorse. Baffled for the time, she returned to the central
chamber; then cautiously, for her eyes and nostrils were smarting with
pain, she tried the other outlet, but