A GREAT FROST 229 



The poor man was very much cast down at his loss 

 when I saw him next day. " I've been feeding them 

 all the winter," he said, " and they never laid an egg 

 until now, and now just when they begin to lay the fox 

 comes and kills them ! If I go to the gentleman of 

 the hunt he perhaps gives me a shilling a head at the 

 outside, and perhaps nothing at all. He'll say, We're 

 very sorry for you, but we can't do anything for you 

 because the money isn't enough and you should take 

 better care of your fowls." He went on in this 

 mournful strain for about half an hour and said that 

 what made it seem worse to him was the fact that the 

 foxes had bred during the summer in the rocks quite 

 near the farm, down by the sea, and he never dis- 

 turbed them never had a thought against them ! I 

 agreed that it was very hard lines and all the rest, but 

 secretly my sympathies were with the fox rather than 

 with him and his fowls. 



It was certainly an almost incredibly audacious act 

 on the part of the fox, seeing that in letting himself 

 down through the hole he had made " hardly big 

 enough for a cat " the farmer said he had put him- 

 self in a trap ; yet in spite of the joyful excitement of 

 killing and of the screaming and the fluttering of the 

 birds he became aware of the danger he was in and 

 made good his escape. His mouth must have watered 

 for many a day at the recollection of the fowls he had 

 killed and left behind, and in the following month he 

 actually came again one dark night and made a hole 

 as before in the roof and then smelling danger made 

 off. 



