t my friend said:

"Stone number three looks to me very much like a fox curled up."

But I could not see it, and we passed. We had not gone many yards
farther when the wind blew on this boulder as on fur.

My friend said, "I am sure that is a fox, lying asleep."

"We'll soon settle that," I replied, and turned back, but as soon as I
had taken one step from the road, up jumped Scarface, for it was he, and
ran. A fire had swept the middle of the pasture, leaving a broad belt
of black; over this he scurried till he came to the unburnt yellow grass
again, where he squatted down and was lost to view. He had been watching
us all the time, and would not have moved had we kept to the road. The
wonderful part of this is, not that he resembled the round stones and
dry grass, but that he knew he did, and was ready to profit by it.

We soon found that it was Scarface and his wife Vixen that had made our
woods their home and our barnyard their base of supplies.

Next morning a search in the pines showed a great bank of earth that had
been scratched up within a few months. It must have come from a hole,
and yet there was none to be seen. It is well known that a really cute
fox, on digging a new den, brings all the earth out at the first hole
made, but carries on a tunnel into some distant thicket. Then closing up
for good the first made and too well-marked door, uses only the entrance
hidden in the thicket.

So after a little search at the other side of a knoll, I found the real
entry and good proof that there was a nest of little foxes inside.

Rising above the brush on the hillside was a great hollow basswood. It
leaned a good deal and had a large hole at the bottom, and a smaller one
at top.

We boys had often used this tree in playing Swiss Family Robinson, and
by cutting steps in its soft punky walls had made it easy to go up and
down in the hollow. Now it came in handy, for next day when the sun was
warm I went there to watch, and from this perch on the roof, I soon saw
the interesting family that lived in the cellar near by. There were four
little foxes; they looked curiously like little lambs, with their woolly
coats, their long thick legs and innocent expressions, and yet a second
glance at their broad, sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed visages showed that each
of these innocents was the makings of a crafty old fox.

They played about, basking in the sun, or wrestling with each other
till a slight sound made them scurry unde