The Bay of the Band 
possess the land at night and we humans take to our 
dens. 
One of the high roads of the foxes runs across the 
farm. Foxes, like men, are more or less mechanical 
in their coming and going. They will move within 
certain well-defined boundaries, running certain defi- 
nite routes; erossing the stream at a particular ford 
every time, traveling this ridge and not that, leaving 
the road at this point, and swinging off in just such 
a circle through the swamp. 
One autumn two foxes were shot at my lower bars 
as they were jumping the little river. Their road 
crosses the stream here, then leads through the 
bars, along the base of the ridge, and up my path to 
the pasture. 
I stood in this path one’ night when a fox that 
the dogs were driving came up behind me, stopped, 
and sniffed at my boots. This last November, 1907, 
a young fox, leaving the hounds in the tangle of 
his trails, trotted up this same path, turned in the 
pasture, and came up to the house. He halted on 
the edge of the lawn just above the woodchuck hole 
that I mentioned a few pages back, and for full ten 
minutes sat there in the moonlight yapping back at 
207 
