“But, of course, we are yet very imperfectly civilized.  Humanity is a lesson learned very slowly by the human race.  Yet we are learning it by degrees, yes! we are learning it,” and he threw out his long stride more emphatically—­the stride of one accustomed to long daily tramps on the hills.

“Strange, that principle of cruelty in the universe!” he resumed, after a pause in which he had walked on in silence.  “Very strange.  To me it is the most mysterious of all things—­though, I suppose, after all, it is no more mysterious than pity.  When, I wonder, did pity begin?  Who was the first human being to pity another?  How strange he must have seemed to the others, how incomprehensible and ridiculous—­not to say dangerous!  There can be little doubt that he was promptly dispatched with stone axes as an enemy of a respectable murderous society.”

“I expect,” said I “that our friends the fox-hunters would take a similar view of our remarks on their sport.”

“No doubt—­and perhaps turn their hounds on us!  A man hunt!  ’Give me the hunting of man!’ as a brutal young poet we know of recently sang.”

“How different was the spirit of Emerson’s old verse,” I said: 

          “Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 
          Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?... 
          O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!”

“That is one of my mottoes!” cried my companion with evident pleasure.  “Let us go and quote it to our fox-hunters!”

“I wonder how the fox is getting on,” I said.

“If he is any sort of fox, he is safe enough as yet, we may be sure.  They are wonderful creatures.  It is not surprising that mankind has always looked upon Reynard as almost a human being—­if not more—­for there is something quite uncanny in his instincts, and the cool, calculating way in which he uses them.  He is come and gone like a ghost.  One moment you were sure you saw him clearly close by and the next he is gone—­who knows where?  He can run almost as swiftly as light, and as softly as a shadow; and in his wildest dash, what a sure judgment he has for the lie of the ground, how unerringly—­and at a moment when a mistake is death—­he selects his cover!  How learned, too, he is in his knowledge of the countryside!  There is not a dry ditch, or a water-course, or an old drain, or a hole in a bank for miles around that is not mysteriously set down in the map he carries in his graceful, clever head; and one need hardly say that all the suitable hiding-places in and around farm-yards are equally well known to him.  Then withal he is so brave.  How splendidly, when wearied out, and hopelessly tracked down, with the game quite up, he will turn on his pursuers, and die with his teeth fast in his enemy’s throat!”

“I believe you are a fox-hunter in disguise,” I laughed.