The Cub-stealing Shepherd
Illicit traffic in fox-cubs and partridge eggs is hard to stamp out. So long as men will buy fox-cubs and eggs there will be men to supply them. If there were no buyers there would be middlemen, and there would be fewer cubs which bear the label, "From Germany." Cubs, wherever they come from, fetch a good price, giving ample profit for an hour's hard digging—say ten shillings each. Cub-snatching is less risky than egg-stealing. So far as we know, even to kill cubs is not an offence against the law, and so there can hardly be a penalty for taking them alive. The worst that could happen to the culprit would be a prosecution for simple trespass and damage. A cunning, rascally cub-stealer of our acquaintance was employed by none other than the local M.F.H. He was a shepherd, and nothing pleased him better than to hear that foxes were plentiful when hounds came his way. He knew that in the spring he would reap many pounds by cub-snatching, and with small risk of rousing suspicion. But one spring morning he was caught in the very act of cub-snatching, and then he ceased to be that Master's shepherd.
