DOGS WILL TELL TALES. 203 



vixen of a litter feed as regularly as the poultry in 

 yoiu' farm-yard, and divert them from the game. 

 The thing that will do harm to the game is a single 

 old dog-fox, who, unmarried and having no children 

 to provide for, roams the country far and wide, and 

 perhaps comes from a distance, where he has been 

 either half-entrapped or half-poisoned by a dead 

 bait. Such a fox as this will do harm, and dreadin^- 

 a bait will catch his own food ; and a man fond of 

 hunting must put up with it. 



J\Iy eyes being always open to signs of tlie 

 time, I saw shot-marks on tlie twigs in one or two 

 muses about Teffont; therefore I need hear neither 

 voice nor gun, nor dog, to be sure that some one 

 had shot at ground game, in direct disobedience 

 of orders. Over the stone quarries, where the 

 main earths were, was a sort of precipice, so steep 

 that, for several hundred yards, there v/as but one 

 place where you could get down to the table-land 

 of the quarries. There were a good many rabbits 

 about that vicinity; so I wished to kill some for 

 the table. The first day I went there, Avhen I began 

 to creep along the edge of the cliff, I observed 

 that Wolf, a deer-dog and retriever, and grandson of 

 Smoker, never went with me beyond one spot, but 

 always waited there till I had either shot a rabbit or 

 passed on to other places ; and as he never went 

 from my heels witliout some very especial good 

 cause, I investigated tlie matter, and found that he 

 always stopped at the only place by which he could 

 descend and pick up the rabbit. Ergo^ as on the 

 first dav he did so with me I had never shot at a 

 rabbit there, his experience must have arisen with 

 some other gunner. Knowing, therefore, through 



