o get in and attack them.
The outsider, apparently, was not successful in breaking in, and
probably went away after a time, but it had dug a sufficiently large
hole for the two young foxes to escape; they were discovered to be
missing in the morning. Addison thought that it might possibly have been
the mother fox.

One of these cubs--as we believed--came back to the pen under singular
circumstances eight or nine months later. Having no use either for the
old boards, or for the ground on which the pen stood, it was not taken
away, but remained there throughout the autumn and following winter.

One day in April we heard two hounds baying, and as it proved, they were
out hunting on their own account and had started a fox. We heard them
from noon till near four in the afternoon, when Ellen, who was in the
kitchen at one of the back windows, saw them, and, at a distance of
twenty rods or less in advance of them, a small fox, coming at speed
across the field, heading toward the west barn.

Addison and I were working up fire-wood in the yard at the time, and
Ellen ran out to tell us what she had seen. We now heard the hounds
close behind the barn, and getting the gun, ran out there. The fox, hard
pressed evidently, had run straight to that old pen and taken refuge in
it, through a hole in the top where the covering boards were off. But
before we reached the spot, one of the hounds had also got in and shaken
the life out of the refugee.

We could not positively identify the fox, yet it was a young fox, and we
all thought that it resembled one of the cubs which we had kept in the
pen. I am inclined to think that, finding itself in sore straits, it
came to the old pen where, though a captive, it had once been safe from
dogs which came about the place.

CHAPTER XIII

WE ALL SET OFF TO HAVE OUR PICTURES TAKEN

A few days later--I think it was June 15th--Gram's constant, urgent
reminders prevailed, and directly after the noontide meal we all set off
for the village, to have our pictures taken. The old lady had never
ceased to mourn the fact that there were two of her sons whose
photographs had not been taken before they enlisted. This was not so
unusual an omission in those days as it would be at present; having
one's photograph taken was then a much less common occurrence. Indeed,
the photograph proper had hardly begun to be made, at least, not in the
rural districts. The ambrotype was still the popular variety of