d
not open his eyes; he stumbled blindly against a tree-trunk, and at last
became entangled in the prickly undergrowth. This was Nature's method
of succour--she forced her wildling to remain quiet, in helpless
exhaustion, till the pain subsided and life could once again be endured.
Panting and sick, the cub lay outstretched among the thorns, while the
tears flowed from his eyes and the froth hung on his lips. Presently,
however, relieved by the copious discharge, he recovered his senses,
and, miserably cowed, with head and brush hanging low, returned before
dawn to the covert. But the vixen in fury drove the cub away; the scent
still clung to him, and rendered him obnoxious even to his mother. In
shame he retired to a dense "double" hedge of hawthorn, where he hid
throughout the day, till he could summon sufficient courage at dusk to
hunt for some dainty morsel wherewith to tempt his sickened appetite.
But before taking up his position above the entrance to a rabbit warren,
he drank at the brook, dipped his tainted fore-paws in the running
water, and, sitting by the margin, removed from his face, as far as
possible, the traces left by the previous night's conflict. Repeatedly,
at all hours of the day and the night, he licked his paws and with them
washed his wounded muzzle and inflamed eyes; but so obstinately did the
offensive odour cling to him that a fortnight elapsed before the last
vestige of the nuisance disappeared. Meanwhile, he narrowly escaped the
mange; and, to add to the discomfort of his wounds, he experienced, now
that his mother's aid was lacking, some difficulty in obtaining
sufficient fresh food.

At length he recovered, and new, downy hair clothed the wounds and the
scratches on his muzzle and throat. Sleek and strong once more, he was
welcomed as a penitent prodigal by the relenting vixen, and, having in
the period of his solitary wanderings learned much about the habits of
the woodland folk, was doubtless able to assist his mother in the future
training of the vixen-cubs.

In that luckless fortnight he had acquired a taste for young pheasants,
had picked up a few fat pigeon-squabs belonging to the last broods of
the year, and had sampled sundry articles of diet--frogs, slugs, snails,
a young hedgehog or two, and a squirrel that, overcome with
inquisitiveness, descended from the tree-tops to inspect the young fox
as he dozed among the bilberries carpeting the forest floor.

Another incident occurre