Chapter III: Part 3

Whilst the farmer was gone the man opened the mouth of the sack and looked down on me. Not satisfied, apparently, with the half light of the outhouse, he took me into the open and peered at me again. I thought I recognized him the first time he inspected me; but now, with the morning sun on his ruddy cheeks I was quite sure. He was the first man I had seen, the man who was on the cairn the morning my mother was killed by the pack; he was the man who, I felt certain, had stopped the earths. I was calm now. I had gone through the agony of death, but still I did not want to die. Life was sweet, very sweet. I was not like a mangy old fox; I was in the pride of my cub-hood.

"What a beauty!" said the earth-stopper, as he continued to gaze at me. "What a grand fox, to be sure! If An'rew can save 'ee, then thee shan't die, now there." Saying this he let go his hold on the sack and turned away. You can depend upon it I made a quick exit and sped off. I hope no serious harm came to Andrew.

I sought a new home, looking therefor on the great moors. For a time I had a life comparatively free from care, but though few of the changes in the autumn life of the wild escaped me, I was slow to interpret those signs that foretold the severe weather that was to suddenly set in. It is, however, hardly matter for wonder that I was blind to the warnings they conveyed, for the frosts of our peninsula are, as a rule, so slight as to relax their feeble grip by noon-day; even the smallest birds suffer little discomfort. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that migratory birds flock to our shores because of the mildness of the climate and the hospitality its feeding grounds offer; but this is only the view of a fox, who welcomes these aliens, and takes heavy toll of their number. Whatever the cause may be, there is no doubt about the fact. This year, however, the flocks of fieldfares, always the first to arrive, were earlier than was their wont. I noted, too, that despite the normal mildness of the weather, our few hibernating creatures suddenly withdrew into their winter quarters; the hedge-hogs to the drifts of leaves and hollow holes of dead trees, and the dormice to their nests in the low bushes. These incidents did not seem to concern me; though I was surprised at the abandonment of the fen by the otters, till presently I learnt that the late salmon had already passed up the river. That seemed to explain it; for the otters always follow the salmon, as every fox knows who has had the luck to find a half-eaten fish on the bank.

I am convinced that all these creatures were conscious of approaching hard weather; and when I discovered that the squirrels with which the wood abounded, had sought their nests in the top-most branches of the red pines, a sense of the evil times before us came to me, too.

I noticed while I lay from dawn to sunset amongst the undergrowth that a strange calm, presaging sudden change of weather, brooded over the solemn wood. The silence was unbroken until twilight, when the starlings settled in and mingled their vespers with the soughing of the rising wind. Then when I left my lair, threaded the boles of the pines and came to the beeches, the leaves crackled under foot, a sign of cold, dry weather; but I did not feel the keen wind until I gained the shoulder of the ridge to the north, which is crowned by the tor. At midnight on the moors the cold became intense; when, near dawn, I crossed the upland road which since some heavy rains had been a quagmire, I found it hard as rock, and the backwater of the pool above the ford was frozen to the edge of the current. On the marshy ground below, the cracking of the ice under my tread disturbed several snipe; and between the alders and my own lair two woodcock got up, which, from their weary flight, I should say had only just arrived.

My snug kennel under the furze looked doubly snug that cold, hard dawn; and whatever privations the future might have in store, there was at least every token of present abundance.

"The long-bills are pretty plentiful," thought I, as I curled up on my dry couch. "Hungry times are over; there will be food galore now."

I slept through the day and sought the fen at nightfall, to find the pool and the mere, or rather those parts of them that remained unfrozen, crowded with wild-fowl. Strangers though we were to one another, they proved very wary and difficult of approach, despite the curiosity my appearance aroused in them.

So matters stood for some time, during which I cared to remain out only part of the night; but when my coat got thick enough to resist the piercing cold I hunted far and late, seldom reaching my kennel before the sun showed red above the sea.

During the period of dry frost I fared well enough; but a snow-storm which occurred at the time of the new moon and lasted for two days and two nights, rendered foraging difficult, and made me feel a stranger in my own country. Except in rudest outline, it was no longer like itself. The fen was a great white plain, broken by a big and a small pool and the winding stream that fed them. In place of the sombre array of pines under the tor, usually as marked a feature in our landscape as were the great reed-beds themselves, a vast slope of snow met the eye; and the tor might have been a fleecy cloud in the leaden sky. Strangest of all was the aspect of the dunes, which looked like great waves of pure foam arrested in their roll.

Many a time I scanned this white undulating waste for the hare that frequented the sand-hills, hoping to mark him in a position where it would be possible to stalk him. I say, "possible" because of the great powdery drifts that rose like new dunes across my hidden trails and barred my progress in every direction. Moreover, each fall of snow caused me fresh trouble; for it stultified the knowledge I had gained, and compelled me to find new ways to my hunting grounds.

To add to my difficulties, soon only a few landmarks were left, and these hard to recognize--horseshoe of thatch about the short chimney was all there was to show the position of the cottage, and it was hard to believe that the snow-laden elms were the same trees whose golden leafage but a month before had cast so deep a shadow on the farmyard where the cock pheasant had been feeding with the fowls. On the edge of the ploughed field next the mowhay were the tracks made by the two wary rabbits whose home was under the big rick, and the few partridges which had escaped our jaws kept near the rubbing post in the middle of the field.

But I recall that fallow best by the course I had across it after the little jack-hare, who led me such a round as I have seldom gone. I lost sight of him in the field beyond the orchard, where the turnips lay in heaps, but followed his line up and down the hill to the head of the fen, across which he went almost in the teeth of a raging blizzard. He had ringed the bulrushes in the heart of the bog before making one of his baffling sidelong leaps, and then set his face for the foot-hills under my lair. The scent was hot amongst the scattered furze-bushes through which he led me, and so heavily clogged were his feet with snow that I felt sure I should overtake him before he reached the tamarisks on the other side of the hill; but I underrated his endurance. I followed him to the waste of sand-hills, only to find that he had disappeared in a drift at the foot of the highest dune. In his desperation--for I was all but on him--he must have plunged into this and worked his way far in, as I could not find him, though I dug and dug into the smothering mass in every direction. Nothing remained but to make my weary way home through the blinding, driving storm. There are more blanks than prizes in the life of even a clever fox.

The scent lay wonderfully that night, and I followed it as easily as I had shortly before followed the scent of a bittern across the snow between the reed-bed and the bulrushes. It was in this isolated clump that the otters so often laid up before the frost hardened the trembling mass environing it; but now I noticed that some of these wily creatures had beaten a deep track across the narrow neck of the big bend of the river, though I did not once get a glimpse of them.

I must pass over much detail of the varying fortunes of that eventful time to speak of the mis-adventures that befell me on an expedition when I unwittingly exposed myself to a great danger, and was lucky to escape with my life. I had risen from my kennel, stretched myself, sniffed the biting wind, listened, shaken my thick coat, and then, as was my wont since giving up my journeys to the hills, first visited the few remaining bits of boggy ground in sheltered places of the brake, with the hope of picking up one of the woodcock that resorted there to feed. I approached one spot after another against the wind and with the utmost stealth; but, despite my extreme caution, I succeeded only in flushing the birds, so wary had they become through being harassed--chiefly, I believe, by young cubs.

After lapping some water below a cascade hung with icicles, I left the soft margin of the rapid runnel which had been riddled by the bills of the woodcock and, emerging from the furze, stole down to the thicket of blackthorns. But my nose told me a fox had been there already; so I at once made for my favorite pool, whence the cries of various wild-fowl reached my ears. I knew that they consisted of duck, widgeon, and teal; but from the noise they made, I judged them to be more numerous than usual, and so they proved.

Through a gap in the reeds I gazed once and again at the tantalizing sight. What more maddening spectacle for a hungry fox than that of game beyond reach? I ransacked my brain to discover a way to get at them. It was beyond my powers. The edge of the acre of water that remained open was a score of yards from the reeds and scarcely less from the island. There was only one course practicable, to disturb the birds and to take up a hidden position from which I should be within striking distance of the pool. The snowy surface which ringed them in denied concealment save at one point, and that was much too far from the water to suit my methods, for the scanty bit of cover was too long springs from the brink of the ice. Any attempt to rush the birds from there seemed vain. Many a time since the frost set in I had stood and weighed the chances it offered, only to scorn the idea of using it for an ambuscade. To-night, somehow--was it because of my ravenous hunger?--the clump of sags, though weighed down by the snow, did not look quite so hopeless as before the last fall; and I decided to accept its hard conditions and give it a trial. It was an exasperating thing to be obliged to scare the birds; but there was no help for it, and so forward I went.

My forefoot was hardly through the fringe of reeds when a mallard saw me and gave the alarm. In an instant a hundred pairs of eyes were turned on me; and, as if fascinated by the sight of so fine a fox, their owners did not take wing until I was nearly half-way across the snow. Then, with a loud "quar, quar, quar" from the ducks, all the birds rose in a confused company, the noise of their wing-beats drowning for a moment the loud rustling of the swaying reeds. I watched them divide into their several skeins, which then wheeled above my head and flew seawards, the widgeon in the van.

Before seeking my ambush, I crossed the ice to the other side of the pool, in the hope of finding a disabled bird in the thick cover, but saw nothing save a few dead starlings that had fallen from their roosting perches on the reeds. The flesh of starlings is nearly as loathsome to me as the flesh of carrion-feeding birds; so I left their stark bodies lying there, and trotted over the wide stretch of snow to the island. When crossing, I noticed a small hole in the ice. It had been made and kept open by otters that they might come there to breathe whilst fishing; but I did not know this at the time. The island, though it reeked with the smell of duck, was blank; so I made for the sags again, and crawled under them carefully in order not to disturb their white coating. Gently as I pushed my pointed muzzle between the stems the frozen snow rattled down in a shower, and this caused me much misgiving, for I feared that the exposed blades, black with decay, would be sure to excite the suspicion of the quick-eyed fowl, and warn them off the water.

When ensconced, I found that my ambush barely screened me, and, what was more serious, it seemed much farther from the pool than in the bloodthirsty moment when I had decided to use it. However, being in, I meant to stay, and so, the tip of my muzzle between two bent blades that grew a few inches in front of the clump, and nothing but the tag of my brush projecting at the rear, I began my vigil. It was bitter work watching with the gale in your teeth, but I might have noticed it less had the ambush been a little nearer the water. Nevertheless, being of a sanguine temperament, I threw sense and sinew into my work as if success were assured. My ears were spread their widest, to catch any sound that reached them above the lapping of the water and the swish of the encompassing reeds; my eyes, if not fixed on the pool, scanned the snowy space between; and my legs were gathered under me ready to spring. One by one some feathers the ducks had left, drifted to the nearer side and were lost to sight; once I caught the faint wing-beats of passing wild-fowl and, raising my eyes, saw the long wedge of them black against the bright stars; but not a bird settled on the water.

Hour after hour passed in this manner, and my patience was just giving out when an incident occurred that dispelled all thought of trying my luck elsewhere. It was not the fish that jumped clear of the surface, which induced me to stay, but the great boil in the water near where it fell. I believed this had been caused by an otter, and quite expected to see the creature land on a small jagged point of ice hard by, where the snow had been much trampled. Nor did mere curiosity keep me an interested spectator: I was expecting to get fish for supper after my wasteful friend had taken one or two bites of his prey. Whilst I watched for his appearance, and watched in vain, a rather larger fish leapt out--once--twice; and the third time it was hardly above the surface when the open jaws of a huge pike showed close behind it, and I could see the bristling array of teeth before a tremendous swirl hid them again. In all my experiences I have only once witnessed anything that took me more by surprise; and from that night I have never swum across to the island without fear of being seized by the grim monster which I now knew tenanted the pool.

The pike had scarcely disappeared before three teal, whose flight I had not heard, settled in the middle of the water and set my brush waving with excitement. Totally unsuspicious of my presence they swam towards me, and approached so close to the ice as to be completely hidden by the bank of snow near its edge. Judging their position as well as I could by the delicious scent that reached me, I made two tremendous leaps, which landed me amongst them before they could take wing. But on account of the spray and the shock of the icy-cold water I missed all three; though my jaws snapped close over the spot where one of them dived. He came up yards away from where I was awaiting him, rose as only a teal can rise, and flew off in company with his mates, who were wheeling about overhead.

With a rankling sense of failure I scrambled with some difficulty on to the ice, shook my coat and, turning my back on my ambush, trotted off as briskly as I could in the direction of the mere. Through the long wait on the snow and the coldness of the water into which I had plunged, my feet were so benumbed that I could scarcely feel them under me when crossing the bog. Nevertheless, I stumbled on until warmth came back to them, and then hunted the waste beyond, working across the wind on the margin of the laid reed-beds in the hope of scenting moorhens or water-rail to break my long fast. Most carefully did I try the patches of sedgy cover in the loops of the stream where I had seldom failed; but even there I met with disappointment, the few birds I winded evading me by diving under the ice which in places covered the strong current.

I must have trotted miles along the zigzag course I took, before I reached the expanse of windswept snow under which lay the frozen mere. From inside the fringe of reeds I could hear the honking of the geese on the open water, and at times a sound that was new to me, a wild trumpeting which seemed to come from where the sea was thundering on the bar. For a fox naturally prompt in decision, I stood there long, considering whether to make a journey that offered but poor prospect of success. In the wild-fowl's feeding-ground I had come from there was at least makeshift for an ambush; on the level ice-field before me there was not cover enough to hide a mouse, and the chance of a kill was very, very small. Choice of supper, however, lay between cold starling, bitter and dry, and hot goose, sweet and juicy--if I could get it--and goose or nothing was my resolve. I set my face for the spot where the scarcely discernible specks on the snow showed the game to be thickest; and if my coat turned white in winter like that of a stoat I had seen a few nights before, I might have stolen at least part of the way unobserved. As it was, my reddish-brown fur, though lighter than in the summer, made me as conspicuous as a crow on a stubble to the noisy sentinels overhead, which at once spread the cry of "Fox afoot!" far and wide over the great mere. The only method possible, then, in this wild-goose chase, was to keep going with the most nonchalant air at my command, as if my sole object in approaching the pool was to wash down a heavy supper; and it was lucky for my plan that my thick coat hid my prominent ribs and concealed my half-starved condition.

Presently I could see that the wild-fowl lining the margin of the ice were nearly all geese; but what riveted my gaze was a small group of big white birds beyond, whose heads towered high above the mass of insignificant-looking duck that crowded the water.

"Halloo! something new in the feather line," thought I. "What monsters are these?"

And then it occurred to me that, as I had never cast eyes on their kind before, it might be that these strangers had never set eyes on a fox, and would entertain no fear of such an innocent-looking creature come to quench his thirst. This line of reasoning seemed so plausible that I licked my dry chops at the prospect of a lordly feast, and for a moment felt inclined to despise such small birds as geese. These latter had for some time held their heads turned my way; so, to show that concealment was not dreamt of, I stood still, raised my mask to the moon, just risen above the headland, and, though it cost me a great effort, barked as joyously as only a full-fed fox can bark. Rarely in my chequered life have I given utterance to notes so expressive of content; and as the geese seemed greatly taken by the music, I continued to indulge them, at the same time lessening the distance that separated us.

We were getting on quite good terms with one another--at least, so I thought--until I was within--well, it is difficult to judge distance over snow--perhaps fifty yards of them. Then I saw unmistakable signs of restlessness. To lull suspicion I waved my brush in my most fascinating manner; I rolled on my back, hoping to prove to them that, murderer though I might be by repute, I was really a playful creature, even on that wild winter's night; and in order to reassure the more timorous, including a fine gander, who had retired from the front to the rear rank, I began to cut capers, running after my brush in small circles, or rather in a spiral which would bring me, as I could see out of the corner of my eye, within rushing distance of two of the most curious of my admirers.

It was all in vain; my back was to the cowardly crew when they rose; but even then I should have seized a laggard had I sprung a few hairs higher, for the tip of my muzzle actually touched his cold webbed foot. In my fall on the edge of the ice I all but lost my balance and toppled into the water. Was I enraged when I recovered myself? I need not enlarge on that.

The flight of the geese alarmed the duck, which rose in a big cloud from the mere, with a noise that would, I am sure, have bewildered any animal except a fox, or perhaps an otter. But I ignored it, and amidst their silly clamor and the loud whirr of their wings that momentarily drowned the gale, fixed my eyes on the three swans--for such they were--who did not take flight like the others, but swam up and down the rough water in a manner which, if not expressive of contempt, was at least aggressive and provocative. Their attitude was a revelation to me; no bird had ever dared challenge me before; and if they see as foxes do, these black-billed strangers who stared so hard must have read blank amazement on my innocent face as I read defiance on theirs. Nor was I free from irritation at the bravado conspicuous in their puffed-out breasts and beruffled plumage.

Suddenly my demeanor changed from amazement to rage. This certainly they must have known from my flaming eyes, bristling fur, and fluffed-out brush lashing from side to side; but up and down they swam, hissing out their summons to come and do battle, if I dared. A fox shrink from combat with feathered foes? Never! I jumped into the water, and swam across the strong current for the spot they had chosen for the contest. All three preserved their determined front until I was close enough to see the yellow on their bills and the snake-like look in their evil eyes, but at my next stroke two of them beat the water with their great wings, rose in the air, and with loud-creaking pinions flew over my head.

"Cowards!" said I. "Why did you not stand your ground?"

Whilst I wondered that the remaining bird did not follow their example, a streak of blood on his white plumage told me he was wounded; and the instant it caught my eye I felt he was mine. I never doubted I should kill him as soon as I could close my jaws on his long white neck; the only thing that troubled me was how I should manage to land him on the ice with such a strong stream running. He was the biggest of the three, a magnificent bird, and, except for his bill, as white as the snow. To my astonishment, wounded though he was, he actually swam to meet me and struck the first blow. Before I could close with him he stretched his head over mine, caught me by the left ear, and pressed me under water. For all my frantic struggles, I was half drowned when I succeeded by a desperate effort in disengaging myself from his grip. Rising close to him, I seized his neck through the thick coat of feathers that protected it, and hung on. The commotion that followed baffles description. With one wing--for the other lay helpless--he lashed the water and spun around in circles, taking me with him. It would have been better to let go than be carried by the strong current I knew not whither; but in such a case a fox can never resolve to relinquish his hold, and it was fortunate for me that, before I had been taken out into the middle of the mere, my teeth slipped off the smooth oily feathers.

I had had enough. Exhausted and benumbed, I made for the ice, now a long way off, and fighting the current with all my strength, had got at length within a few yards of the jagged edge when, to my horror, I heard the swan coming up, and gaining on me at every stroke. I did my very utmost to reach the ice, but in vain; he was on me before I could land. Again I was immersed; twice I planted my feet on the edge, only to be pulled back. I had caught a Tartar, and escape seemed impossible; even if he did not drown me, I feared I should be sucked under the ice. The thought of losing my life roused me to a supreme effort. With gnashing teeth I turned on my persecutor. My onset must have terrified him, for he quailed before it and retreated a few yards into the mere. With the help of my brush I whipped round, gained the rough edge, and, putting forth my last bit of strength, dragged myself on to the ice, and fell, utterly spent, just beyond his reach.

For a time I lay there motionless, but by-and-by fear moved me to turn my head and look for my enemy. There he was, proudly swimming up and down before me with blood-stained breast and drooping wing, still defiant. It was the most humiliating moment of my life. Presently I rose and shook myself, but to no purpose. My bedraggled coat had frozen, and hung stiffly on me. I exchanged looks of vengeance with my terrible foe and slunk away.

What a weary journey it was over the snow! How I floundered through the deep drift that separated me from my cover, and how glad I was to reach the friendly shelter of the brake! It was good to be screened from the eyes of the countless wild-fowl who had watched the fight, and whose cries had sounded like jeers as I tottered across the wide ice-field. There is little bark left in a fox when the quacking of ducks disconcerts him and makes his brake a welcome refuge.

I sat down under the furze, brushed the bloody feather from my muzzle and licked my paws, which had been cut by the sharp-edged ice in my mad struggles to get out of the water. Though dawn was some two hours off, I had no heart for any more hunting; so I made for my lair, which I reached by way of the brambly thicket above the quarry, and, after shaking my coat again, crept to where my snug kennel lay under its double roof of gorse and snow. There, hidden from all eyes and from the bright lights of the frosty sky, I curled up in the cup of dry spines with my brush about my nose, and heedless of the gale that raged above but could not reach me, forgot my troubles in sleep.

The hounds drew the tor wood once, and only once, after the thaw, and did not pay a single visit to our brake, though the earth was stopped three times before the end of the season. The explanation is probably to be found in the heavy rains which flooded the fen and made the country unfit for hunting; big pools were found where none were seen before, and the springs which broke out in many new places, together with the surface-drainage of rain and melted snow, not only kept them full, but seemed to turn every bit of spongy ground into a quagmire.

Left to myself, I was as happy as a fox can be, and, forgetting the hardships I had passed through, looked forward with pleasurable anticipation--as, indeed, every wilding does--to the golden days of summer, when troubles are few and delights many. Yet the tamarisks had hardly begun to feather before there was brought into the countryside a hound which proved the most terrible enemy that ever shadowed my life.

That the farmer had need of a more watchful guardian for the poultry yard than old Shep I knew well enough from the serious losses he had sustained. Besides fowls and ducks, even geese and turkeys had been carried off, some by day under cover of mist and drizzling rain, but mostly at night. I had seen foxes returning from that direction with birds in their mouths; I had actually come on the caches, both inside and outside our brake, where they had buried what they could not take away; and this wholesale plundering caused me great anxiety, because I knew it would lead to reprisals. But I never dreamt in my most troubled moments of the scourge that was being prepared. Even had I known that old Shep was to be superseded and another farm-dog put in his place the news would not have alarmed me in the least, because of the contempt I felt for the few specimens I had seen. But I was now to learn that there are farm-dogs and farm-dogs.

As soon as the new dog was led home I came on evidence of his work. I found the body of a fox near the gap of a reclaimed field that had recently been filched from our cover, and could see by the fang-marks in his chest that he had been murdered. Now it was impossible that old Shep should be the culprit. He was always asleep at midnight, and bore a good character amongst us for utter harmlessness; yet everything pointed to his guilt. A double trail led from the warm carcass towards the farm buildings, and one was the trail of a dog. I walked slowly up the hill, trying to unravel the mystery, and had scarcely passed over the crest when a loud bay, very different from old Shep's, broke the stillness of the night and explained everything. Whilst I listened it was repeated again and again, and its meaning was unmistakable. It was a warning to the fox from the new guardian of the farmyard that the days of robbery without punishment were past, and that a new régime had begun. I yapped no reply, for it was best to let this dangerous customer believe that the fox he had killed was a stranger to the district, and that none frequented the wild within reach of his voice.

I was very miserable now. Putting all together, I was convinced that the newcomer would prove a dangerous enemy; and yet I felt that I ought to see him, for I recollected my mother's story of the fox who, like the otter in the quaking bog, judged the jackass by his bray, and suffered agonies until he cast eyes on him.

The opportunity offered a few days later without my seeking it. On a lovely spring morning such as Nature often lavishes on her wildlings, I lay stretched out amongst the scattered furze-bushes enjoying the warmth of the sun, without a thought of any intrusion on the peaceful scene. The lambs were bleating in the field next the dunes, the rooks cawing in the leafing elms, and the farm-boy, whom I could not see for the thicket of blackthorns at the foot of the croft, was singing the drowsy song he sang always at his work. A magpie on the tallest of the blackthorns seemed unusually interested in either the boy or his work; but I thought nothing of that. Presently, however, to my surprise, it began mobbing some creature. Then I rose to my feet, almost expecting to view a fox, when, to my amazement, I saw a huge dog leave the thicket and come into the open. It was the new hound, and the sight of him made me catch my breath. What struck me most--for without it, size and strength of jaw signify nothing--was the speed I read in his long muscular limbs. He moved with an ease I had never seen in any other dog. Had his hind-quarters sloped like mine, I should, like the magpie, have taken him for a denizen of the wild; but the defect betrayed him as the servant of man.

My curiosity was excited, and I would not steal away to the near brake until I had discovered what his business was. It was of the simplest. He stopped about half-way up the hill at a spot full in the hot sun, turned round two or three times as I do to make my bed, and laid himself down amongst the tussocks of grass. I watched his bloodshot eyes blink in the blazing light; noted his restlessness, the twitching of his cropped ears, and the quivering of his great nostrils, even whilst he seemed to doze; studied his huge bull-terrier head, raised when a yellowhammer settled on the golden bush behind him; shuddered at the array of crowded teeth when he yawned.

He may have lain an hour amid the bright new herbage before the boy whistled. His ears showed that he heard, but he took no further notice. When the whistle was repeated he growled. Then the boy screamed, as I have heard the huntsman scream after me; and the great brindled brute leapt to his feet and bounded down the hill at a pace I had not thought any creature capable of. I knew then that no fox could get away from him in the open, or escape with his life when overtaken.

"No more stealing of old gobblers," said I under my breath as I slunk away to the earth.

For some days I scarcely slept on account of the worry; and the more I thought it over in the quiet of my kennel, the surer I felt that this great restless hound would render life unbearable by invading my cover. Was it likely that a creature pricked by pride of limb and of fang would be content to wander within the narrow confines of a dozen fields criss-crossed with trails, and never trespass on the environing wilds to which the trails led? Impossible! Is there not an eternal feud between the tame and the wild canine? This half-wild protege of man, free to wander at will and wreak his vengeance on us hated dwellers in the brake, able too by speed and strength to carry out his fell designs, was certain, sooner or later, to follow the cursed scent that lingers where we tread, and track me to my hidden lair.

The days went by, however, and I was not molested; though night after night, as I heard his threatening bay, I asked myself, How long shall I be left in peace? When a fortnight passed without a sign, I began to think that this sharer of man's hearth might, after all, be nothing more than a noisy farmyard braggart, brave enough, perhaps, on grass or plough-land, but afraid to trespass on the waste. Rudely was my mistake brought home to me.

Now what I am going to tell is not something I have heard: I saw it with my own eyes on the moor which rises from the head of the fen. I was trotting along at the time, planning how best to work the ground on such a still night, when a fox--a stranger to me--came over the brow on my left, and dashed across my front at a gallop. At first I thought he must have some game in sight; but as neither hare nor leveret was to be seen, I could not help, in the absence of any apparent reason for his conduct, imagining that he must be mad, like a fox I once saw crossing the bar. Strange fancy, perhaps; but then, what sane animal, and, above all, what fox, would waste his speed after nothing? And what in the world was there for the fugitive to fly from? Suddenly I thought of the hound, and as suddenly, just when the fox had disappeared where the land dipped, I heard the thud of heavy feet. Peeping between two boulders that concealed me from view, I saw him come over the crest at the spot where I first caught sight of the fox. He was running by scent, but at so tremendous a pace that I feared the fox could not live before him.

His silence chilled me more than his loud bay; but though I could not detect the faintest whimper, every moment there was a strange clicking sound--a noise foreign to the moorland. When he came abreast of me I saw it was caused by the broken chain that hung from his neck and struck the steel collar he wore. In a twinkling the dusky fiend had disappeared in the gloom, his head set for the tor. I listened. After a time I heard him crash through a long bramble thicket. Then a long interval. Then the owls, which had been very noisy, suddenly ceased their midnight chorus. They were watching the tragic chase between the boles of the pines. How it ended I never knew; but I am inclined to think that the fox reached the rocks and escaped. If he had been killed, the foxes which lodged on the western slope of the tor would have forsaken their coverts, at least for a time; and this they did not do.

That night it was useless to try to hunt, as I kept looking back every dozen strides for fear the hound might be following me. At last I gave it up; but I did not return along my usual trail, laid when the night had no fear for me. I avoided open ground as much as possible, to steal along tangled dips and gullies. Before crossing a ridge I halted to peer through the darkness, fearful of seeing the sinister green eyes that would apprise me of the hound's approach.

On reaching the double trail, I cleared it at a bound, as though it had been a line of fire, and made for the river at the spot where it spreads over the marshes; for I hoped by swimming it at its widest part to add to the difficulties of the hound if he should follow me. Although the precautions I took proved unnecessary, I mention a few of them to show the fear the creature had inspired in me. After that I used to foil the runs in the brake for the purpose of puzzling him if he chanced to strike my night's trail and tried to trace me to my lair.

But of what avail were all my wiles against a creature so endowed? At length the marvellous powers he possessed enabled him not only to find my kennel, but to approach it so noiselessly as almost to surprise me in my sleep. Had it not been for the slight rustling of the furze, caused by his grim protruding muzzle, he must have taken me where I lay as a fox takes a rabbit in its seat. As it was it was a close call. Enraged at my escape, he came crashing after me. I led him to the cover beyond the quarry, where the furze was close and stunted, and where the runs were so small that he had to force a way along them. In these unfavorable conditions I thought he would soon tire of pursuit; but to my surprise he persisted hour after hour, despite the stifling atmosphere of the brake on such a close, hot day. Could he have driven me into the open I should have been at his mercy; I knew this as well as he, and never gave him the chance he longed for.

In the end I wearied him out, and none too soon, for I was almost spent before he relinquished the chase. I had escaped, but my dread of the fiend was greater than ever--so great, indeed, that I never went near the brake again as long as he lived.

The silence of the night at this time was painful. A dog-fox dared no longer call to his mate for fear of betraying his whereabouts to the hound, now abroad at all hours. I hardly dared sleep two days following, in the same place, lest in his wanderings he should have come upon my couch and be there awaiting me. I lived under a reign of terror, and the gloom that brooded over brake, tor, and fen spread to the higher moors, where the hound had once been seen. But, gloom or no gloom, I had to have food though every journey I made to the fen was at the risk of my life.

Generally I was through early enough to enable me, by hurrying, to be back in my couch in gorse or heather before dawn. One morning, however, I was so late that I decided to lie up for the day in the fen rather than risk crossing the moors after daybreak.

Through the mist that lay over the heart of the bog I could just make out the tall clump of rushes where I meant to lie up if the slough should yet prove firm enough to bear my weight. On striking the river, which was much above the previous summer's level, I waded into the water, and, to throw the hound out in the event of his following me, floated some distance with the current before landing on the opposite side. As I rustled through the flags and the belt of reeds, whose dew-laden plumes were sparkling in the first rays of day, a heron rose lazily and, skimming a reed bed, flew away towards the half-risen sun, leaving me, as far as I could see, the sole tenant of the silent marshland. Only the bare, flat quagmire now lay between me and my harborage, and, anxious to be hidden from sight, I lost no time in setting out across the treacherous surface.

I selected a line which seemed to promise the firmest footing, and stepped with all possible lightness. Yet, in spite of every care, I sank deep in places, and midway the crust was so thin that for a while I was in great danger of foundering. However, by putting forth all my strength, I was able, at last, to free myself from the clutches of the more liquid mire and reach the drier, sounder surface between it and the rushes. I was indeed glad to feel the solid ground under my feet once more.

Had I realized the peril before setting out I should not have attempted to cross. I ought, perhaps, to have turned back on striking the dangerous zone; but, once embarked on an undertaking, it is not in my nature to retreat, for there is that in a fox which makes him go through with his purpose at all hazards, though it may compel him to pass between the legs of the huntsman's horse or traverse a bog that threatens to swallow him up.

At last, exhausted and bemired, I entered the clump, whose shadow lay like a wide road across that part of the quagmire where it fell, and chose for my couch a tall heap of dead reeds just inside the wall of pale green stems. It seemed to have served for a nest of the captive wild swan, and had probably been floated to the spot by the subsiding flood.

To reach my bed I had to cross the stream which drained the pool within the dense ring of bulrushes; and as I waded through it a well-known scent reached my nostrils, and told me that the wiliest creature of the night had also sought this isolated retreat to hover in. I watched the sedgy islet whence the scent proceeded, expecting to get a glimpse of the otter couching there; but he lay low and did not expose a hair, despite the crackling of the reeds as I made my bed.

I was free now to attend to my toilet and prepare for the rest I so much needed. With my pads dirty as they were, sleep was out of the question; so I licked them and my legs as clean as I could, and, thus refreshed, soon dozed off, with a sense of security to which I had long been a stranger.

I slept soundly, without the horrid dreams of the previous weeks, and was awakened at last by the hum of insects. A year before, when I often lay in the fen, my ears would not have noticed this loud undertone of noonday life; but latterly I had, for the most part, kennelled in the moors, where were only noiseless butterflies and lizards, silent as sphinxes. I was not really sorry to be disturbed, for it was delightful to lie there, vaguely conscious of the warmth of the sun and looking about me in a drowsy way. I turned my blinking eyes now to the distant mere, sparkling at the end of a vista in the reeds, now to the hoary summit of the tor seen against the blue sky, and again to the water-insects at sport on a small pool just beyond the black shadow which had crept up well-nigh to the foot of the bulrushes.

Presently, tiring of the view, I was about to drop asleep again, when I heard a noise which, if it had been less violent, I should have thought to be caused by an animal shaking itself. It was followed by a commotion on the river-bank, and then, to my horror, the hound burst through the reeds. He had followed my trail to that point, and guessed where I was, for he kept looking at the clump, and even at the part of it where I was crouching. He threw up his nose and sniffed the air, as I could see by the working of his gleaming nostrils; but there was no wind to carry the scent across the morass--not enough, indeed, to stir he light feathery tops of the reeds behind him.

Soon he advanced to the very edge of the bog and looked longingly at the clump, as if he were eager to reach it but dared not risk the crossing. At last, after running up and down the edge several times, apparently in search of a hard place, he decided to brave the danger, and with cat-like steps, ludicrous to watch in such a monster, began the perilous passage. He was soon up to his knees, and the deeper he went the greater my excitement grew. Every instant I expected to see him sink out of sight. So sure of it did I feel that I almost ventured to show myself and fling at the fiend the reproaches that crowded to my tongue. But though his progress was very slow, he was inch by inch reducing the distance that separated us.

Before long he was near enough for me to hear the sucking noise made by the slough as it reluctantly released its grip on the long muscular legs. He did not pick and chose his way, or deviate by a reed's breadth from the straight course that would bring him to the gap in the belt of rushes made by the overflow. Now he was on the most treacherous part of the quagmire, which shook with the struggle he made to keep his head above the surface. With dilated pupils I watched what must be his last efforts. I noted the rise of the mire on his collar, till at last it rose no farther, but still he came on; and then I noticed the liquid mud raised in front of him like the ripple in front of a swan. Wading he must have been, though he looked exactly as though he were swimming; and his great red tongue lolled out with the frantic exertions.

When he got nearer his feet must have found the bottom, for his shoulders rose free of the surface; and I saw his hair bristle as though something had suddenly angered him. He had scented me or the otter, or both; and in his haste to add to the number of his victims, he ploughed through the last score yards of mud like a mad creature. Along the muddy bed of the overflow he toiled step by step; and the instant he entered the pool, I rose to my feet, doubtful whether to stay or retreat, and paused to listen before committing myself.

At that moment I heard a sullen plunge, then another, as two otters dived into the pool. Thinking there was safety in numbers, I decided to remain in hiding rather than trust to my slight chance of escape across the bog. The wild struggles of the hound told me he had viewed the otters; but he must have lost them again for presently all was very quiet, though I could hear him at times nosing the rushes and ferns round the pool, as if in search of them. My eyes were as alert as my ears, and soon caught a heave on the surface of the overflow and the gleam of an otter's back as the creature rounded the shallow bend leading to the river. A few seconds later I saw the other otter glide noiselessly away, and then a great fear seized me as I realized that I was left alone with the hound.

Scarcely were my eyes back on the pool before he landed on the islet, where he stood with the water dripping from his brindled coat, whilst with nostrils raised he sniffed the air. As I watched him through the stems, I became aware that he winded me; and when I saw him take to the water and head straight; for my hiding-place, I stole silently but swiftly away and, fearful of trusting to the muddy bed of the stream, committed myself to the bog.

I trod its treacherous surface as lightly as I could, but because of the smallness of my feet I kept breaking through the crust, and made only slow progress. Nevertheless I succeeded in getting farther than I expected before the hound sighted me. As soon as he did he burst through the rushes and, making a tremendous spring, landed within a few yards of where I was struggling with the mire.