wing their
tongues," crashed through the briars into the fern; and at once Brock
was surrounded.

Luckily, he had neither been punished too severely by his sire, nor had
exhausted himself in hotly resisting the chastisement. For a few
seconds, however, as the hounds pressed closely in the rough-and-tumble
fray, trying to tear him limb from limb, he was disconcerted. But
quickly regaining his self-possession, he began to make the fight
exceedingly warm for his assailants. A hound caught him by the leg;
turning, he caught the aggressor by the muzzle. His strong, sharp teeth
crashed through nose and lip clean to the bone, and the discomfited
hound, directly one of the pack had "created a diversion," made off at
full speed, running "heel," and howling at the top of his voice. One
after another, Brock served two couples thus, till the wood was filled
with a mournful chorus altogether different from the usual music of the
hounds.

Little hurt, except for a bruise or two on his loose, rough hide, and
feeling almost as fresh as when the attack began, Brock, with his face
to the few foes still remaining to threaten him hoarsely from a safe
distance, retired with dignity to the mound, and disappeared in the
tunnel just as reinforcements of the enemy hastened up the slope.

Henceforth, even in leafy summer, he seldom remained outside his
dwelling during the day, and any fresh sign of a dog in the
neighbourhood of his immediate haunt never failed to fill him with rage
and apprehension.

Since the time when their silvery-grey coats had turned to
brownish-yellow, the badger cubs had become more and more independent of
their parents; and before long, familiar with the forest paths, they
often wandered alone. Yet so regular was their habit of returning home
during the hour preceding dawn, that, unless something untoward
happened, the last badger to reach the "earth" was rarely more than a
few minutes after the first. Towards the end of autumn, however, the
female cub seemed to have lost this habit; on several occasions dawn was
breaking when she sought her couch; and one morning she was missing
from the family. Her regular home-coming had given place to meeting, in
a copse over the hill, a young male badger reared among the rocks of a
glen up-stream; and by him she had at last been led away to a home,
which, after inspecting several other likely places, he had made by
enlarging a rabbit burrow in a long disused quarry.

Brock wa