For each kind of prey they were taught a way to hunt, for every animal has some great strength or it could not live, and some great weakness or the others could not live.  The squirrel’s weakness was foolish curiosity; the fox’s that he can’t climb a tree.  And the training of the little foxes was all shaped to take advantage of the weakness of the other creatures and to make up for their own by defter play where they are strong.

From their parents they learned the chief axioms of the fox world.  How, is not easy to say.  But that they learned this in company with their parents was clear.  Here are some that foxes taught me, without saying a word:—­

Never sleep on your straight track.

Your nose is before your eyes, then trust it first.

A fool runs down the wind.

Running rills cure many ills.

Never take the open if you can keep the cover.

Never leave a straight trail if a crooked one will do.

If it’s strange, it’s hostile.

Dust and water burn the scent.

Never hunt mice in a rabbit-woods, or rabbits in a henyard.

Keep off the grass.

Inklings of the meanings of these were already entering the little ones’ minds—­thus, ‘Never follow what you can’t smell,’ was wise, they could see, because if you can’t smell it, then the wind is so that it must smell you.

One by one they learned the birds and beasts of their home woods, and then as they were able to go abroad with their parents they learned new animals.  They were beginning to think they knew the scent of everything that moved.  But one night the mother took them to a field where was a strange black flat thing on the ground.  She brought them on purpose to smell it, but at the first whiff their every hair stood on end, they trembled, they knew not why-it seemed to tingle through their blood and fill them with instinctive hate and fear.  And when she saw its full effect she told them—­

“That is man-scent.”

[Illustration]

III

Meanwhile the hens continued to disappear.  I had not betrayed the den of cubs.  Indeed, I thought a good deal more of the little rascals than I did of the hens; but uncle was dreadfully wrought up and made most disparaging remarks about my woodcraft.  To please him I one day took the hound across to the woods and seating myself on a stump on the open hillside, I bade the dog go on.  Within three minutes he sang out in the tongue all hunters know so well, “Fox! fox! fox! straight away down the valley.”

After awhile I heard them coming back.  There I saw the fox—­Scarface—­loping lightly across the river-bottom to the stream.  In he went and trotted along in the shallow water near the margin for two hundred yards, then came out straight toward me.  Though in full view, he saw me not, but came up the hill watching over his shoulder for the hound.  Within ten feet of me he turned and sat with his back to me while he craned his neck and showed an eager interest in the doings of the hound.  Ranger came bawling along the trail till he came to the running water, the killer of scent, and here he was puzzled; but there was only one thing to do; that was by going up and down both banks find where the fox had left the river.