348 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



under a great pile of lumber had to be killed; its lair 

 showed the remains not only of chickens and ducks, but 

 of two muskrats, and, what was rather curious, of two 

 skates or flatfish. A fox which lived in the big wood lot 

 evidently disliked our companionship and abandoned his 

 home. Of recent years I have actually seen but one fox 

 near Sagamore Hill. This was early one morning, when 

 I had spent the night camping on the wooded shores near 

 the mouth of Huntington Harbor. The younger chil- 

 dren were with me, this being one of the camping-out 

 trips, in rowboats, on the Sound, taken especially for their 

 benefit. We had camped the previous evening in a glade 

 by the edge of a low sea-bluff, far away from any house ; 

 and while the children were intently watching me as I 

 fried strips of beefsteak and thin slices of potatoes in 

 bacon fat, we heard a fox barking in the woods. This 

 gave them a delightfully wild feeling, and with re- 

 freshing confidence they discussed the likelihood of 

 seeing it next morning; and to my astonishment see 

 it we did, on the shore, soon after we started to row 

 home. 



One pleasant fall morning in 1892 I was writing in 

 the gun-room, on the top floor of the house, from the 

 windows of which one can see far over the Sound. Sud- 

 denly my small boy of five bustled up in great excite- 

 ment to tell me that the hired-man had come back from 

 the wood-pile pond a muddy pool in a beech and 

 hickory grove a few hundred yards from the house to 

 say that he had seen a coon and that I should come 

 down at once with my rifle; for Davis, the colored gar- 



