going back at each slight alarm, tugging at his chain, or
at times biting it in fury while he held it down with his fore-paws.
Suddenly he paused as though listening, then raising his little black
nose he poured out a short, quavering cry.

Once or twice this was repeated, the time between being occupied in
worrying the chain and running about. Then an answer came. The far-away
_Yap yurrr_ of the old fox. A few minutes later a shadowy form appeared
on the wood-pile. The little one slunk into his box, but at once
returned and ran to meet his mother with all the gladness that a fox
could show. Quick as a flash she seized him and turned to bear him away
by the road she came. But the moment the end of the chain was reached
the cub was rudely jerked from the old one's mouth, and she, scared by
the opening of a window, fled over the wood-pile.

An hour afterward the cub had ceased to run about or cry. I peeped out,
and by the light of the moon saw the form of the mother at full length
on the ground by the little one gnawing at something--the clank of iron
told what, it was that cruel chain. And Tip, the little one, meanwhile
was helping himself to a warm drink.

On my going out she fled into the dark woods, but there by the
shelter-box were two little mice, bloody and still warm, food for the
cub brought by the devoted mother. And in the morning I found the chain
was very bright for a foot or two next the little one's collar.

On walking across the woods to the ruined den, I again found signs of
Vixen. The poor heart-broken mother had come and dug out the bedraggled
bodies of her little ones.

There lay the three little baby foxes all licked smooth now, and by them
were two of our hens fresh killed. The newly heaved earth was printed
all over with tell-tale signs--signs that told me that here by the side
of her dead she had watched like Rizpah. Here she had brought their
usual meal, the spoil of her nightly hunt. Here she had stretched
herself beside them and vainly offered them their natural drink and
yearned to feed and warm them as of old; but only stiff little bodies
under their soft wool she found, and little cold noses still and
unresponsive.

A deep impress of elbows, breast, and hocks showed where she had laid in
silent grief and watched them for long and mourned as a wild mother can
mourn for its young. But from that time she came no more to the ruined
den, for now she surely knew that her little ones were dead