so great to him that for some time he could not do
anything, but knelt beside her turning her limp body stupidly in his
hands. At length he recognised that she was indeed dead, and beginning
to consider what dreadful afflictions God had visited him with, he
blasphemed horribly and called on God to strike him dead, or give his
wife back to him.

"Is it not enough," he cried, adding a foul blasphemous oath, "that you
should rob me of my dear wife, making her a fox, but now you must rob me
of that fox too, that has been my only solace and comfort in this
affliction?"

Then he burst into tears and began wringing his hands and continued
there in such an extremity of grief for half-an-hour that he cared
nothing, neither what he was doing, nor what would become of him in the
future, but only knew that his life was ended now and he would not live
any longer than he could help.

All this while the little girl Polly stood by, first staring, then
asking him what had happened, and lastly crying with fear, but he never
heeded her nor looked at her but only tore his hair, sometimes shouted
at God, or shook his fist at Heaven. So in a fright Polly opened the
door and ran out of the garden.

At length worn out, and as it were all numb with his loss, Mr. Tebrick
got up and went within doors, leaving his dear fox lying near where she
had fallen.

He stayed indoors only two minutes and then came out again with a razor
in his hand intending to cut his own throat, for he was out of his
senses in this first paroxysm of grief. But his vixen was gone, at
which he looked about for a moment bewildered, and then enraged,
thinking that somebody must have taken the body.

The door of the garden being open he ran straight through it. Now this
door, which had been left ajar by Polly when she ran off, opened into a
little courtyard where the fowls were shut in at night; the woodhouse
and the privy also stood there. On the far side of it from the garden
gate were two large wooden doors big enough when open to let a cart
enter, and high enough to keep a man from looking over into the yard.

When Mr. Tebrick got into the yard he found his vixen leaping up at
these doors, and wild with terror, but as lively as ever he saw her in
his life. He ran up to her but she shrank away from him, and would then
have dodged him too, but he caught hold of her. She bared her teeth at
him but he paid no heed to that, only picked her straight up into his
arms and