For a long while, as it seemed to him, he lay very still, with closed
eyes, straining his ears to hear every rustle among the leaves, or any
sound that might be the cubs stirring in the earth.

At last he must have dropped asleep, for he woke suddenly with all his
senses alert, and opening his eyes found a full-grown fox within six
feet of him sitting on its haunches like a dog and watching his face
with curiosity. Mr. Tebrick saw instantly that it was not Silvia. When
he moved the fox got up and shifted his eyes, but still stood his
ground, and Mr. Tebrick recognised him then for the dog-fox he had seen
once before carrying a hare. It was the same dark beast with a large
white tag to his brush. Now the secret was out and Mr. Tebrick could see
his rival before him. Here was the real father of his godchildren, who
could be certain of their taking after him, and leading over again his
wild and rakish life. Mr. Tebrick stared for a long time at the handsome
rogue, who glanced back at him with distrust and watchfulness patent in
his face, but not without defiance too, and it seemed to Mr. Tebrick as
if there was also a touch of cynical humour in his look, as if he said:

"By Gad! we two have been strangely brought together!"

And to the man, at any rate, it seemed strange that they were thus
linked, and he wondered if the love his rival there bare to his vixen
and his cubs were the same thing in kind as his own.

"We would both of us give our lives for theirs," he said to himself as
he reasoned upon it, "we both of us are happy chiefly in their company.
What pride this fellow must feel to have such a wife, and such children
taking after him. And has he not reason for his pride? He lives in a
world where he is beset with a thousand dangers. For half the year he is
hunted, everywhere dogs pursue him, men lay traps for him or menace him.
He owes nothing to another."

But he did not speak, knowing that his words would only alarm the fox;
then in a few minutes he saw the dog-fox look over his shoulder, and
then he trotted off as lightly as a gossamer veil blown in the wind,
and, in a minute or two more, back he comes with his vixen and the cubs
all around him. Seeing the dog-fox thus surrounded by vixen and cubs was
too much for Mr. Tebrick; in spite of all his philosophy a pang of
jealousy shot through him. He could see that Silvia had been hunting
with her cubs, and also that she had forgotten that he would come that
morn