REDPAD THE FOX 45 
not lurk under the wall. But as he went there 
was a half-strangled, hysterical yell behind him. 
The dog suddenly leaped up, and rushed madly 
towards the gate, as though in his terror his first 
instinct was to run home. His agonised eyes, 
fear-stricken, glinted white in the moonlight, and 
there was foam on his jowl. Redpad took the 
wall in one bound, but as he sprang he heard a dull 
thud, as the dog, leaping blindly in the extremity of 
his frenzy, struck the top bar of the gate, and fell 
back struggling convulsively. 
Redpad ran as he had seldom run before, for 
he believed that the other pursued him, and that 
the mysterious madness would be upon him too 
if he were overtaken. But the hideous sounds 
which tore the silence of the night behind gradually 
grew fainter, and before he had crossed the demesne 
wall the dog lay still and stiff beside the torn lamb. 
There Paddy Magragh found him at dawn, and went 
home chuckling ; and there also, a little later, his 
owner found him, and buried him secretly in the 
corner of a turnip field. 
For obvious reasons Jack Skehan did not 
publish the story of that night abroad ; but in the 
country round it was noticed ever after that his 
lambing ewes were kept in the home-field ; and 
also that from this time onwards he ceased to 
