TGe Lay of He Band 
only sixteen miles by the roundabout road from Bos- 
ton Common! But let him live here—and keep 
chickens ! 
One day, as we were sitting down to a noon 
dinner, I heard the hens squawk, and out I tore. 
The fox had a big black hen and was making off for 
the woods. I made after the fox. There is a sharp 
ridge back of the henyard, which was thickly cov- 
ered with stump sprouts and slashings. The fox took 
to the ridge. From the house to the henyard it is 
all downhill, and I wanted that hen. She weighed a 
good eight pounds, —a load for any fox, —and what 
with her squawking and flopping, the tangle of brush 
and the steep hillside, it is small wonder that just 
short of the top I fell upon her, to the great sorrow 
of the fox, who held on until I was within reach of him. 
But such an experience as this, while it would be 
quite impossible to a summer boarder, is yet a not 
uncommon experience for my unobserving, fox-hating 
neighbors. They seldom see more, however ; whereas, 
a study of the lay of the land hereabout reveals a 
real fox community overlying our farm community 
like some faint tracing. We humans possess the land 
by day and the foxes keep to their dens; the foxes 
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