“What’s the hunting?” I asked.

“Never mind,” said my father sharply.  “No doubt you’ll find out in time, that is if you live through the shooting.”

“What’s the shooting?” I began, but my father cuffed me over the head and I was silent.

I may tell you that my mother soon got over the loss of my brother, for just about that time she had four new little ones, after which neither she nor my father seemed to think any more about us.  My sister and I hated those little ones.  We two alone remembered my brother, and sometimes wondered whether he was quite gone or would one day come back.  The fox, I am glad to say, got caught in a trap.  At least I am not glad now—­I was glad because, you see, I was so much afraid of her.

THE SHOOTING

I was quite close by one morning when the fox, who was smelling about after me, I suppose because it had liked my brother so much, got caught in the big trap which was covered over artfully with earth and baited with some stuff which stank horribly.  I remember it looked very like my own hind-legs.  The fox, not being able to find me, went to this filth and tried to eat it.

Then suddenly there was a dreadful fuss.  The fox yelped and flew into the air.  I saw that a great black thing was fast on its forepaw.  How that fox did jump and roll!  It was quite wonderful to see her.  She looked like a great yellow ball, except for a lot of white marks about the head, which were her teeth.  But the trap would not come away, because it was tied to a root with a chain.

At last the fox grew tired and, lying down, began to think, licking its paw as it thought and making a kind of moaning noise.  Next it commenced gnawing at the root after trying the chain and finding that its teeth would not go into it.  While it was doing this I heard the sound of a man somewhere in the wood.  So did the fox, and oh! it looked so frightened.  It lay down panting, its tongue hanging out and its ears pressed back against its head, and whisked its big tail from side to side.  Then it began to gnaw again, but this time at its own leg.  It wanted to bite it off and so get away.  I thought this very brave of the fox, and though I hated it because it had eaten my brother and tried to eat me, I felt quite sorry.

It was about half through its leg when the man came.  I remember that he had a cat with a little red collar on its neck, and an owl in his hand, both of them dead, for he was Giles, the head-keeper, going round his traps.  He was a tall man with sandy whiskers and a rough voice, and he carried a single-barrelled gun under his arm.

You see, now that I am dead I know the use of these things, just as I understand all that was said, though of course at the time it had no meaning for me.  Still I find that I have forgotten nothing, not one word from the beginning of my life to the end.

The keeper, who was on his way to the place where he nailed the creatures he did not like by dozens upon poles, looked down and saw the fox.  “Oh! my beauty,” he said, “so I have got you at last.  Don’t you think yourself clever trying to bite off that leg.  You’d have done it too, only I came along just in time.  Well, good night, old girl, you won’t have no more of my pheasants.”