rned probably by the noise which we
made, the goose-hunter stole out silently on the farther side and ran on
across the open fields of the Aunt Hannah Lot. As we emerged from the
belt of woodland, we caught sight of him, toiling up a hillside beyond
the fields, fifty or sixty rods away.

"It is of no use to chase him any further," said Addison, pulling up.
"He will reach the woods in a few minutes more."

By this time we were all three badly out of breath. The fox had the best
of the race. We could distinguish plainly the white goose across his
back, in contrast to his butter-colored coat and great bushy tail.

"Wouldn't Gram fume to see that!" Halse exclaimed. "Her best old goose
is taking its last ride."

"I think I know where that fox is going," remarked Addison. "I was in
those woods, gunning, one day last fall, and I came to a fox burrow, in
the side of a knoll, among trees. There was no end of yellow dirt, dug
out, and there seemed to be two or three holes, leading back into the
side-hill. I told the Old Squire about it. He said it was a fox-hole,
and that there had been one there for years. When he was a young man, he
once saw six foxes playing around that knoll, and, first and last, he
trapped a number there."

We went back to our interrupted breakfast. Gram heard our tidings with
much vexation. Gramp laughed. "If the foxes got every goose, I shouldn't
cry," said he. "Nasty creatures! Worse than a parcel of pigs about the
farm."

"But you like to put your head on a soft pillow as well as any one,"
replied Gram calmly. "If you know of anything that makes better pillows
than _live_ geese feathers, I shall be glad to hear about it."

The Old Squire not having any proper substitute to offer, Gram went on
to say that she wished some of us possessed the energy (I believe she
said _spunk_) to make an end of that fox; for now that it had achieved
the capture of a goose from her flock, it would be quite likely to come
back for another, in the course of a day or two.

This appeal stirred our pride, and after we had gone out to hoe corn
that forenoon, Addison asked the Old Squire whether he thought it likely
we could unearth the fox, if, as we suspected, it had its haunt in the
burrow on the hillside of the Aunt Hannah Lot.

"Maybe," replied the Old Squire, "by digging hard enough and long
enough. But 'tis no easy job."

Addison did not say anything more for ten or fifteen minutes, when he
observed that as Gram