tunnel, and, directly, the
den was the scene of wild confusion and uproar, as its inmates leaped
and tumbled over each other in their frantic efforts to escape. For a
few minutes, the advent of danger unnerved them; then, as if peculiarly
fascinated by the grim, motionless enemy blocking their only outlet,
they began an aimless, shuffling dance, baring their teeth and hissing
as they lurched from side to side. Their suspense was soon ended. The
badger, emerging partly from the passage, gripped one of the cubs by a
hind-leg, and dragged it backwards along the passage to the thicket
outside, where, after worrying her victim unmercifully, she ended its
life by crushing its skull, above the muzzle, into fragments between
her teeth.

Once more, but this time furious with the taste of blood, she hurried to
the den; and the scene of fear and violence was repeated. Her third
visit was futile: the vixen with the other cubs had bolted into the main
gallery, and escaped thence to the wood, through an old opening, almost
choked with withered leaves, at the back of the "set."

They never returned, but the following spring a strange vixen from the
rocks across the valley came to the burrow, gave birth to her young,
and, in due course, without loss, was evicted by Brock's relentless
mate.

[Illustration: "HE CLIMBED FROM HIS DOORWAY, AND STOOD MOTIONLESS, WITH
UPLIFTED NOSTRILS, INHALING EACH BREATH OF SCENT."]

On the night after the death of the fox-cubs, when Brock was led by the
she-badger to the spot where her victims lay, he noticed that man's
foot-scent was strong on the grass around, and also that his hand-scent
lingered on the fur of the slain animal. Often, during the succeeding
two months, he was awakened in the day by quick, irregular footsteps
overhead; and later, when he climbed from his doorway, and stood
motionless, with uplifted nostrils, inhaling each breath of scent, he
found that the dreaded signs of man were numerous on the trail, on
the near beech-trunk, and even on the mound before the "set." Once, on
returning home with his family, he was greatly alarmed to discover that
in the night the man had visited his haunts, and that a dog had passed
down the galleries and disturbed the bed on which he slept.
Henceforward, he used the main opening as an exit only, and invariably
entered the "set" by the opening through which the vixen had escaped
from his mate, passing, on his way, the mouth of a side-gallery
connec