ches, till his fur wrinkled and straightened in numberless
uneasy movements from the tormenting tickling of the little pests.
Presently, with a shrill bizz of rapid wings, a large, yellow-striped
fly passed close to his ears. He struck down the tormenting insect with
a random flip of his paws, snapped at it to complete the work of
destruction, and proceeded leisurely to eat his victim. To his utter
surprise, he seemed to have captured a living, angry thorn, which,
despite his most violent efforts to tear it away with his paws, stuck in
his lip, and produced a smarting, burning sensation that was
intolerable. He rolled on the ground and rubbed his muzzle in the grass,
but to no purpose. No wonder, then, that subsequently his manner
towards an occasional hibernating wasp among the moss-roots in the
gravel-pit was deferential in the extreme!

Vulp and his mate soon learned that in rabbit-hunting it was exceedingly
profitable to co-operate. Thus, while the vixen "lay up" near a warren,
Vulp skirted the copse and chased the conies home towards his waiting
spouse. After considerable practice, the trick paid handsomely, and food
was seldom lacking. The vixen possessed, perhaps, a slightly more
delicate sense of smell than the fox. Frequently she scented a rabbit in
a clump of fern or gorse after Vulp had passed it by; suddenly stopping,
she would tell her lord of her discovery by signs he readily understood,
and then, while he kept outside the tangle, would pounce on the coney in
its retreat, or start it helter-skelter into his very jaws. But of all
the tricks and the devices she taught him, the chief, undoubtedly, were
those concerned with the capture of hens and ducks from a neighbouring
farmstead. An adult fox, as a rule, does not pay frequent visits to a
farmstead; but Vulp, like his sire, was passionately fond of poultry,
and so, in after years, the vixen's instructions caused him to become
the dread of every henwife in the district. Undoubtedly he would have
been shot had he not been the prize most sought for by the Master of the
Hounds, who cared little for the frequent demands made on his purse by
the cottagers, so long as the fox that slaughtered the poultry gave
abundant sport when running fast and straight before the pack.

The months drifted by, and signs of spring became more and more abundant
in the valley. About the beginning of March, Vulp deserted the "earth"
prepared by himself and the vixen for their prospec