40 REDPAD THE FOX 
altogether like the white paper, but he was hungry, 
and a paunch was a paunch. He picked it up 
gingerly and carried it off, for a magpie does not 
care to eat where he has killed he is too accustomed 
to traps. Even an egg is impaled on his bill and 
conveyed away. Luckily for this magpie, however, 
it so happened that when he was flying into the 
wood he accidentally let the choice morsel fall out 
of sight among the trees. Therefore, although he 
went supperless to bed, he was fortunate in that 
he roosted in the branches that night, instead of 
lying claws upwards on the ground. Redpad 
found that paunch two days afterwards and ate 
a piece ; but something peculiar about the morsel 
in its taste or odour warned him, and although 
he was very sick for some hours, yet he eventually 
recovered. 
There was great jubilation the next morning 
when it was found that some of the poison had 
been taken ; but the triumph was short-lived, for 
the following night another lamb had disappeared. 
The next evening Jack Skehan took his old gun 
and the little whippet-nosed dog who worked for 
him among the sheep all day, and sat up to watch. 
The dog sat beside him on a stone, and when he was 
not watching his master for orders, he gazed serenely 
above the heads of the sheep. Nothing, however, 
