Frisky sat up and thought.
Lop Ear would give the alarm, and then, even if he threw the hound off the scent, there would be men with guns, and more dodging of bullets than he cared to risk. He had often seen it, watching from his hill-top in the woods. And he always tried to profit by other people’s experience.
Suddenly his bright eyes began to snap. The very idea! He would make friends with Lop Ear.
Then Lop Ear might try to be sound asleep on the night when Frisky visited the chicken coop; and should the Hired Man get out his gun, the hound would surely lose his trail.
Thereafter, for days on end, Frisky made the strangest advances to the dignified old hound, whenever the latter fared forth into the woods to catch him a mouse for supper. It was very much like a puppy trying to coax an old dog to play.
“Come chase me!” Frisky would invite, dancing ahead just out of Lop Ear’s reach. Then, “I’ll chase you,” he would vary the program. And Lop Ear (half unwillingly) played the role assigned him, till at last he came to look on his evening ramble in the woods with Frisky as a distinct part of his day’s pleasuring.
Not that Frisky ever came within reach of Lop Ear’s jaws. No, indeed! That was carrying the thing a bit too far. But he did finally get the hound to the point where he no longer considered it his duty to try to make an end of the young fox. And he really enjoyed their games of hide and seek.
The Boy from the Valley Farm did not know what to make of Lop Ear’s growing fondness for solitary rambles.
One night, when the October moon gleamed cool and sparkling through the fringe of fir trees, young Frisky Fox might have been seen loping softly through the corn-field.
“Who goes there?” bayed Lop Ear, as he leaped the barn-yard fence.