250 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



in our neighbourhood. In my company he had had 

 rare opportunities of watching the blue-eyed cubs at 

 play, restrained from attacking them by the absolute 

 control which I gradually acquired over him out of 

 doors. Before that control was complete he once 

 dived into a fox-hole, remained for twenty minutes 

 in the bowels of the earth, and then only emerged, 

 all yellow with sand, to vanish instantly into another 

 hole. Even in his old age he one day turned up an 

 old gray fox in a bit of gorse where I was looking for 

 Stonechats, and trundled after him on stiff legs with 

 his own peculiar air of indignant contempt. And 

 the sad conclusion forced itself upon me, as I stood 

 looking at the dead fox and the drain-pipe, that for 

 once the old dog had miscalculated, or not calculated 

 at all, that he had been attracted by the carcase in 

 the ditch, had scented foxes up the drain, made his 

 way up it, and met with a speedy and sportsmanlike 

 end. Sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras ! 



Further inquiry confirmed this guess. It was 

 confidently asserted by a man who worked hard by 

 that a vixen had taken up her abode in the drain. 

 Some indeed thought that, once in the pipe, the dog 

 had failed to make his way back again, but this I 

 refused, and still refuse, to believe. At great labour 

 and cost we might have opened the drain for some 

 distance, but this was not to be done on the Sunday 

 on which he vanished; and as no sound could be 



