o save their skins! I could hear myself breathe, and feel my teeth
click, and my knees knock together. And then! Oh dear! There they
came across our cornfield. Two of them! And they could fly, almost.
At least you could scarcely see that they touched the ground. The mean
old things were paying up for the pigs and lambs now. Through the
fence, across the road, straight toward me they came. Almost red
backs, nearly white beneath, long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears,
and long tongues, fire red, hanging from their open mouths; their sleek
sides pulsing, and that awful din coming through the woods behind them.
One second, the first paused to glance toward either side, and threw
back its head to listen. What it saw, and heard, showed it. I guess
then it was sorry it ever took people's ham, and their greens, and
their blankets; and it could see and hear that it had no chance--to
save its skin.

"Oh Lord! Dear Lord! Help me!" I prayed.

It had to be me, there was no one else. I never had opened the big
doors; I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my
might--and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the
sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes--I asked
for help; maybe I got it. The doors went back, and I climbed up the
ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there, praying with all my
might: "Make them come in! Dear Lord, make them come in! Give them a
chance! Help them to save their skins, O Lord!"

With a whizz and a flash one went past me, skimmed the cider press, and
rushed across the hay; then the other. I fell to the floor and the
next thing I knew the doors were shut, and I was back at my place. I
just went down in a heap and leaned against the wall and shook, and
then I laughed and said: "Thank you, Lord! Thank you for helping with
the door! And the foxes! The beautiful little red and white foxes!
They've got their chance! They'll save their skins! They'll get back
to their holes and their babies! Praise the Lord!"

I knew when I heard that come out, that it was exactly like my father
said it when Amos Hurd was redeemed. I never knew father to say it so
impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were
afraid of him, and father said if once he got started right, he would
go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing. I suppose I
shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the Dorkings, and
ham, and w