THE BADGER AND THE FOX. 



809 



door securely, lie left the animal to his own devices for the night, 

 little thinking what these might be. Next morning he found, to 

 his horror, that the badger had torn up the floor of the hutch 

 where he had been placed, and got into that of the doe, where he 

 had slaughtered the whole family. Their bodies lay dead there, 

 the badger curled up in the middle of them, fast asleep, and very 

 full of rabbit. His first impulse was to kill the beast, there and 

 then, but on thinking it over he remembered that he had paid a 

 considerable figure for it ; so he got the badger out and sold him 

 to one of his friends as a pet, telling him that it was " quite harm- 



.~^,V{- V"jl >, '.-.';.' I J5 



The Badger. 



less, would live on bread and milk, and in a very short time would 

 follow him about like a dog." Very soon, indeed, he was re- 

 quested by this friend to take him back again, but he refused. 



I will describe one of his homes, which I have visited many 

 times. At the bottom of a glade, by the side of the chalk hill, is 

 a dip or hollow, not deep, but a kind of basin about twice the size 

 of one of my living-rooms. Round this, old beeches, growing close 

 by, have pushed forth their great roots in all directions ; on one 

 side of the hollow a gnarled oak stands, not any great height, but 

 of vast bulk, the great limbs reaching far over the open space. In 

 the middle of the hollow, under the roots of this oak, our friar of 

 orders gray has made his home, and a very secure and pleasant 

 one it is. 



When the moon is high up in the sky, and throws a soft sil- 

 very blue tone on the tops of the firs which line the side of the 

 glade, the glade itself showing like a bright blue-green stripe, and 

 nothing is heard but the jar of the fern-owl as he flits over the 

 glade, or the drone of some beetle as he flies along, then is the 



