CHAPTER V 

 THE FOX 



A MOST beautiful animal is the British fox, 

 being perhaps as lovely as any creature we 

 have. I shall never forget the first fox I 

 ever saw, though but a small child at the time. 

 My father had taken me for a Sunday morning 

 walk through the woods, following a path that led 

 by a swift and noisy brook that tumbled over a 

 rocky bed. We were standing at the stream side, 

 watching a dipper hopping from stone to stone, 

 when something stirred in the bracken on the 

 farther side of the water. The autumn frosts had 

 turned the fern yellow and brown, but the golden 

 gleam that caught the eye was redder than even 

 the sunlit bracken. There, not twenty yards 

 away, stood a fox gazing at us. His coat shone 

 golden-red in the sunlight, his black-tipped ears 

 were pricked, his delicately pointed muzzle was 

 turned in our direction, and so he stood, with one 

 dainty black paw held up, looking at us; next 

 moment he was gone, disappearing noiselessly 

 into the fern ; but the memory remained, a memory 

 of a vision of wild beauty. 



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