WILY^S STORY 21 



with leaves, moss, grass, or fine earth, she would 

 caution us to let it alone by her manner of looking 

 about, as if she were alarmed and expected to see 

 our enemy the keeper. Sometimes the iron trap 

 would be seen ; and then she would lead us to look 

 at and smell it. Our noses, however, would not 

 always be a safeguard, for after the trap has been 

 laid some days, particularly if washed by rain, the 

 taint of the evil hand would be gone, and though 

 we ourselves, thanks to the watchfulness of our 

 mother, escaped the danger, hundreds of others, led 

 on by hunger, have fallen into the snare, losing 

 either leg or toes. Baits for catching stoats and 

 weasels, set upon a stick some fourteen inches above 

 the ground, we carried away without mischief from 

 the trap below. At about six months old we were 

 three parts grown, I and my brothers being some- 

 thing larger than our sisters, whose heads were 

 thinner and more pointed. The white tip of the 

 brush was not, let me remark, pecuhar to either 

 sex of us. I and one of my brothers, and also one 

 of my sisters, had it whilst the other sister and the 

 other brother were altogether without it, not having 

 a single white hair. That brother has been known 

 to profit by the exemption, when on being viewed 

 in the spring of the year the hounds have been 





