hough he felt a
misgiving and instinctively knew that he must hide or keep at a distance
till the curiously shaped monster had gone. The vixen warned him
repeatedly; and she herself, after giving the signal "Hide!" would slink
away, and wander for miles before returning to her family, if only the
measured footfall of a poacher or a farm labourer sounded faintly
through the covert.

But soon the young fox learned, in a way not to be misunderstood, that
the presence of man meant undoubted danger. One day in October, as he
was intently watching the movements of a sportsman in the copse, a big
cock pheasant rose with a great clatter from the brambles, a loud report
rang through the covert, and a shaggy brown and white spaniel dashed
yelping into the bushes. Darting impetuously from his lair, the cub
easily out-distanced the dog, and quickly found refuge in an adjoining
thicket, where he remained in safety during the rest of the day. Night
brought him another adventure. While crossing a pasture towards a wooded
belt on the hillside, he discovered, to his surprise, that a man was
creeping stealthily towards him through the shadows. A moment later, a
great lurcher came bounding over the field. The fox turned, made for the
hedgerow, and gained the friendly shelter of the hawthorns just as the
dog crashed into the ditch. The frightened creature now ran along the
opposite side of the hedge in a straight line towards the wood, and for
a second time narrowly escaped the lurcher's teeth; but, by keeping
close to the ditch and among the prickly bushes on the top of the
hedge-bank, he at last succeeded in baffling his long-legged foe and
reached the wood unharmed.

Vulp had thus awakened to the dangers which, during winter and the
earliest days of spring, were always to beset him. But the apprehensions
caused by his little affair with the spaniel, and even by his narrow
escape from the lurcher, were trifling compared with the dread and
distress of being driven for hours before the hounds. And so full of
perils was the first winter of his life that nothing but a combination
of sheer luck with great endurance could then have sufficed to save him
from destruction. Quickly, one after the other, the young vixens were
missing from the thickets; soon afterwards, three of the cubs belonging
to the litter that had been reared in the artificial "earth"
disappeared; and an old fox, the sire of that litter, was killed after a
long, wearisome ch