ad a large number of sheep. These Wully guarded with his old-time
sagacity, watching them while they fed and bringing them to the fold at
night. He was reserved and preoccupied for a dog, and rather too
ready to show his teeth to strangers, but he was so unremitting in
his attention to his flock that Dorley did not lose a lamb that year,
although the neighboring farmers paid the usual tribute to eagles and to
foxes.

The dales are poor fox-hunting country at best. The rocky ridges, high
stone walls, and precipices are too numerous to please the riders, and
the final retreats in the rocks are so plentiful that it was a marvel
the foxes did not overrun Monsaldale. But they didn't. There had been
but little reason for complaint until the year 1881, when a sly old fox
quartered himself on the fat parish, like a mouse inside a cheese, and
laughed equally at the hounds of the huntsmen and the lurchers of the
farmers. He was several times run by the Peak hounds, and escaped by
making for the Devil's Hole. Once in this gorge, where the cracks in the
rocks extend unknown distances, he was safe. The country folk began to
see something more than chance in the fact that he always escaped at the
Devil's Hole, and when one of the hounds who nearly caught this Devil's
Fox soon after went mad, it removed all doubt as to the spiritual
paternity of said fox.

He continued his career of rapine, making audacious raids and
hair-breadth escapes, and finally began, as do many old foxes, to kill
from a mania for slaughter. Thus it was that Digby lost ten lambs in one
night. Carroll lost seven the next night. Later, the vicarage duck-pond
was wholly devastated, and scarcely a night passed but someone in the
region had to report a carnage of poultry, lambs or sheep, and, finally
even calves.

Of course all the slaughter was attributed to this one fox of the
Devil's Hole. It was known only that he was a very large fox, at least
one that made a very large track. He never was clearly seen, even by the
huntsmen. And it was noticed that Thunder and Bell, the stanchest hounds
in the pack, had refused to tongue or even to follow the trail when he
was hunted.

His reputation for madness sufficed to make the master of the Peak
hounds avoid the neighborhood. The farmers in Monsaldale, led by Jo,
agreed among themselves that if it would only come on a snow, they would
assemble and beat the whole country, and in defiance of all rules of the
hunt, get r