ouse across the river. My uncle,
impatient at the daily loss of hens, went out himself, sat on the open
knoll, and when old Scarface trotted to his lookout to watch the dull
hound on the river fiat below, my uncle remorselessly shot him in the
back, at the very moment when he was grinning over a new triumph.

IV

But still the hens were disappearing. My uncle was wrathy. He determined
to conduct the war himself, and sowed the woods with poison baits,
trusting to luck that our own dogs would not get them. He indulged in
contemptuous remarks on my by-gone woodcraft, and went out evenings with
a gun and the two dogs, to see what he could destroy.

Vix knew right well what a poisoned bait was; she passed them by or else
treated them with active contempt, but one she dropped down the hole
of an old enemy, a skunk, who was never afterward seen. Formerly old
Scarface was always ready to take charge of the dogs, and keep them out
of mischief. But now that Vix had the whole burden of the brood, she
could no longer spend time in breaking every track to the den, and was
not always at hand to meet and mislead the foes that might be coming too
near.

The end is easily foreseen. Ranger followed a hot trail to the den, and
Spot, the fox-terrier, announced that the family was at home, and then
did his best to go in after them.

The whole secret was now out, and the whole family doomed. The hired man
came around with pick and shovel to dig them out, while we and the dogs
stood by. Old Vix soon showed herself in the near woods, and led the
dogs away off down the river, where she shook them off when she thought
proper, by the simple device of springing on a sheep's back. The
frightened animal ran for several hundred yards, then Vix got off,
knowing that there was now a hopeless gap in the scent, and returned to
the den. But the dogs, baffled by the break in the trail, soon did the
same, to find Vix hanging about in despair, vainly trying to decoy us
away from her treasures.

Meanwhile Paddy plied both pick and shovel with vigor and effect. The
yellow, gravelly sand was heaping on both sides, and the shoulders of
the sturdy digger were sinking below the level. After an hour's digging,
enlivened by frantic rushes of the dogs after the old fox, who hovered
near in the woods, Pat called:

"Here they are, sot!"

It was the den at the end of the burrow, and cowering as far back as
they could, were the four little woolly cubs.

Befor