THE HAWK AND THE FOX : A PRIZE FIGHT. 279 
stomacli of the fox. Some have been known which, after regain- 
ing their liberty, came back in hard times, after three months’ ab- 
sence, to the farm where they had lived, and always — remark it — 
at the hour of meal-time. 
I was the owner of a very young fox, many years ago — a nota- 
ble fellow for his wits, capable of giving a commissary-general 
eighty points in the hundred in the game of embezzling provisions. 
He was one of our consolations in the study of Greek and Latin, 
for my young classmates and myself. The applauses lavished 
perhaps too freely on his good tricks, and the intoxication of suc- 
cess, had succeeded in developing enormously his natural cunning. 
My mother, responsible for all his practical jokes, sometimes as- 
serted in a low, serious tone that she could have purchased a horse 
with the amount of indemnities which the rogue had cost her for 
fowls, turkeys, and rabbits. 
A reward was at last set upon his head, but who would have 
dared to tie the halter when we were near ? 
A bold hawk feared not to attempt the enterprise. He was a 
formidable bird, the terror of all the poodles and cats of the country- 
side, exulting in fifty victories. He demanded closed lists against 
the fox, and the fight took place with my consent. 
The first attack was terrible. Frightened by the impetuosity of 
the aggressor, the four-footed beast shamefully turned tail and 
sought a retreat in the darkest corner of the kitchen, scene of the 
combat. Then the victorious hawk proudly perched upon the 
crupper of his hiding enemy, picking with his beak at the most in- 
sensible and thickest furred part of his adversary’s body, the only 
part exposed to his outrages. At last, satiated with his triumph 
and with the public applause, the bird came to perch upon the 
back of a low chair, where he soon nodded and fell asleep in the 
attitude of a gorged buzzard ; and during the lively discussion of 
theories among the spectators relative to the superiority of the 
feathered carnivora over the four-footed carnivora, growing warm 
on both sides, the whole assembly had lost sight of the combat- 
tan ts, when a sudden scream of pain caused the echoes of tin pans 
and kettles to ring again. All turned to look. Moving spectacle ! 
There the hawk lay upon the floor, beating the air with the last 
