not mysteriously set down in the map he carries in his graceful,
clever head; and one need hardly say that all the suitable hiding-places
in and around farm-yards are equally well known to him. Then withal he
is so brave. How splendidly, when wearied out, and hopelessly tracked
down, with the game quite up, he will turn on his pursuers, and die with
his teeth fast in his enemy's throat!"

"I believe you are a fox-hunter in disguise," I laughed.

"Well, I have hunted as a boy," he said, "and I know something of what
those red-coated gentlemen are feeling. But soon I got more interested
in studying nature than killing it, and when I became a naturalist I
ceased to be a hunter. You get to love the things so that it seems like
killing little children. They come so close to you, are so beautiful and
so clever; and sometimes there seems such a curious pathos about them.
How any one can kill a deer with that woman's look in its eyes, I don't
know. I should always expect the deer to change into a fairy princess,
and die in my arms with the red blood running from her white breast. And
pigeons, too, with their soft sunny coo all the summer afternoon, or the
sudden lapping of sleepy wings round the chimneys--how can any one trap
or shoot them with blood-curdling rapidity, and not expect to see
ghosts!"

"Of course, there is this difference about the fox," I said, "that it is
really in a sense born to be hunted. For not only is it a fierce hunter
itself, but it would not be allowed to exist at all, so to say, unless
it consented to being hunted. Like a gladiator it accepts a comfortable
living for a certain time, on condition of its providing at last a
spirited exhibition of dying. In other words, it is preserved entirely
for the purpose of being hunted. It must accept life on that condition
or be extirpated as destructive vermin by the plundered farmer. Life is
sweet, after all, and to be a kind of protected highwayman of the
poultry-yard, for a few sweet toothsome years, taking one's chances of
being surely brought to book at last, may perhaps seem worth while."

"Yes! but how does your image of the protected gladiator reflect on
those who protect him? There, of course, is the point. The gladiator, as
you say, is willing to take his chances in exchange for fat living and
idleness, as long as he lives. You may even say that his profession is
good for him, develops fine qualities of mind even as well as body--but
what of the peo