EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 3 
There before me, at the end of the quiet spring 
afternoon, two of the wildest and shyest of all of our 
native animals lay asleep. Never before had I seen 
a fox in all that country, nor even suspected that one 
had a home within a scant mile of mine. As I watched 
them sleeping, I felt somehow that the wildwood 
had taken me into her confidence and was trusting 
her children to my care; and I would no more have 
harmed them, than I would my own. 
As I watched the cub curled up in a woolly ball, 
I wanted to creep up and stroke his soft fur. Leaving 
the hard path, I started to cover as silently as possi- 
ble the fifty feet that lay between us. Before I had 
gone far, a leaf rustled underfoot, and in a second the 
cub was on his feet, wide awake, and staring down at 
me. With one foot in the air, I waited and waited 
until he settled down to sleep again. A minute 
later the same thing happened once more, only to be 
repeated at every step or so. It took me something 
like half an hour to reach a point within twenty 
feet of where he lay, and I looked straight into his 
eyes each time that he stood up. 
No wild animal can tell a man from a tree by sight 
alone if only he stands still. Suddenly, as the cub 
sprang up, perhaps for the tenth time, there about 
six feet to one side of him stood the old mother fox. 
I had not heard a sound or seen a movement, but 
there she was. I was so close that I dared not move 
my head to look at the cub, but turned only my eyes. 
When I looked back the mother fox was gone. With 
no sudden movement that I could detect, there 
