i88 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



hedgerow, looking this way and that and listening. She will 

 stop and stare greedily at the grown lambs which huddle 

 away in a sort of inquisitive alarm. When the vixen comes 

 quite close to you, as you wait by the gap peering at her, and 

 becomes aware, she sheers off and moves rapidly ; but at no 

 moment is there any sort of start or look of alarm. She 

 never scurries, never loses for a moment her full presence of 

 mind. 



A splendid picture of this strong-nerved readiness of the 

 fox was seen in a Cheshire wood after the hunt was gone. 



The wood had been drawn blank and the keeper's pride was 

 touched. The hunt would certainly say that he trapped or 

 shot his foxes, a crime still regarded as among the most 

 heinous. So the keeper, with a stopper of earths, entered 

 the woods and led the way to a great sloping tree. Snug 

 and almost hidden in an axil of the branches lay a watchful 

 vixen. She was stirred out of her lair ; and seeing her only 

 alternative, took it with great deliberation. Quite slowly and 

 steadily, looking at the watchers on this side and that, she 

 stalked down the trunk, taking in, one would say, every 

 detail of the scene. Then, within a yard or two of the 

 ground, she jumped down and slipped off with wonderful 

 noiselessness on velvet foot through the undergrowth. She 

 might have stood for a likeness of the Happy Warrior. 



