ed gun against his coming. He knows it, and
comes just the same. At least the gun does not keep him away. My
neighbors have dogs, but they do not keep him away. Guns, dogs, traps,
poison--nothing can keep the foxes away.

It must have been about four o'clock the other morning when one of my
children tiptoed into my room and whispered, "Father, there's the old
fox walking around Pigeon-Henny's coop behind the barn."

I got up and hurried with the little fellow into his room, and sure
enough, there in the fog of the dim morning I could make out the form
of a fox moving slowly around the small coop.

The old hen was clucking in terror to her chicks, her cries having
awakened the small boys.

I got myself down into the basement, seized my gun, and, gliding out
through the cellar door, crept stealthily into the barn.

The back window was open. The thick, wet fog came pouring in like
smoke. I moved up boldly through the heavy smother and looked down
into the field. There was the blur of the small coop, but where was
the fox?

Pushing the muzzle of my double-barreled gun out across the
window-sill, I waited.

Yes, there, through a rift in the fog, stood the fox! What a shot!
The old rascal cocked his ears toward the house. All was still.
Quickly under the wire of the coop went his paw, the old hen fluttering
and crying in fresh terror.

Carefully, noiselessly, I swung the muzzle of the gun around on the
window-sill until the bead drew dead upon the thief. The cow in her
stall beside me did not stir. I knew that four small boys in the
bedroom window had their eyes riveted upon that fox waiting for me to
fire. It was a nervous situation, so early in the morning, in the
cold, white fog, and without anything much but slippers on. Usually,
of course, I shot in boots.

But there stood the fox clawing out my young chickens, and, steadying
the gun as best I could on the moving window-sill, I fired.

That the fox jumped is not to be wondered at. I jumped myself as both
barrels went off together. A gun is a sudden thing any time of day,
but so early in the morning, and when everything was wrapped in silence
and the ocean fog, the double explosion was extremely startling.

I should have fired only one barrel, for the fox, after jumping, turned
around and looked all over the end of the barn to see if the shooting
were going to happen again. I wished then that I had saved the other
barrel.

All I could do wa