of the morning and the horror of his dream were gone.
What if they were foxes? Mr. Tebrick found that he could be happy with
them. As the weather was hot he lay out there all the night, first
playing hide and seek with them in the dark till, missing his vixen and
the cubs proving obstreperous, he lay down and was soon asleep.

He was woken up soon after dawn by one of the cubs tugging at his
shoelaces in play. When he sat up he saw two of the cubs standing near
him on their hind legs, wrestling with each other, the other two were
playing hide and seek round a tree trunk, and now Angelica let go his
laces and came romping into his arms to kiss him and say "Good morning"
to him, then worrying the points of his waistcoat a little shyly after
the warmth of his embrace.

That moment of awakening was very sweet to him. The freshness of the
morning, the scent of everything at the day's rebirth, the first beams
of the sun upon a tree-top near, and a pigeon rising into the air
suddenly, all delighted him. Even the rough scent of the body of the cub
in his arms seemed to him delicious.

At that moment all human customs and institutions seemed to him nothing
but folly; for said he, "I would exchange all my life as a man for my
happiness now, and even now I retain almost all of the ridiculous
conceptions of a man. The beasts are happier and I will deserve that
happiness as best I can."

After he had looked at the cubs playing merrily, how, with soft stealth,
one would creep behind another to bounce out and startle him, a thought
came into Mr. Tebrick's head, and that was that these cubs were
innocent, they were as stainless snow, they could not sin, for God had
created them to be thus and they could break none of His commandments.
And he fancied also that men sin because they cannot be as the animals.

Presently he got up full of happiness, and began making his way home
when suddenly he came to a full stop and asked himself: "What is going
to happen to them?"

This question rooted him stockishly in a cold and deadly fear as if he
had seen a snake before him. At last he shook his head and hurried on
his path. Aye, indeed, what would become of his vixen and her children?

This thought put him into such a fever of apprehension that he did his
best not to think of it any more, but yet it stayed with him all that
day and for weeks after, at the back of his mind, so that he was not
careless in his happiness as before, but as it w