THE EAGLE AND THE FOX.
An Eagle that had young ones, looking for something to feed them with, happened to spy a Fox’s Cub that lay basking itself abroad in the sun: she made a stoop, and trussed it immediately; but before she had carried it quite off, the old Fox coming home, implored her, with tears, to spare her Cub, and pity the distress of a poor fond mother, who would think no affliction so great as that of losing her child. The Eagle, whose nest was high in an old hollow tree, thought herself secure from all projects of revenge, and so bore away the Cub to her young ones, without shewing any regard to the supplications of the Fox. But that subtle creature, highly incensed at this outrageous barbarity, ran to an altar, where some country people had been sacrificing a kid in the open fields, and catching up a fire-brand in her mouth, made towards the tree where the Eagle’s nest was, with a resolution of revenge. She had scarcely reached its root, when the Eagle, terrified with the approaching ruin of herself and family, begged of the Fox to desist, and, with much submission, returned her the Cub safe and sound.