“Come and play,” coaxed Frisky. “You can’t catch me!” and leaping up the sloping roof of the hen-house, he squeezed gracefully through the barred window. A moment more and there was a stifled squawk and Frisky squeezed his way back through the bars, dragging a hen behind him.
But alas for the best laid plans.
“Bow-wow-wow! You can’t do that, you know!” suddenly bayed Lop Ear. “That’s carrying the game a little too far. After all, I have my duty to perform.”
“What is it?” yelled the Hired Man, poking his head from his sleeping-room in the barn-loft. “A fox, eh?” and he grabbed for his gun, leaning far out to scan the moonlit fields.
Frisky Fox, by keeping the shed between himself and the gun, made off through the corn-field with the hen across his shoulder.
Lop Ear, his warning uttered, now dashed madly in quite the wrong direction,—for the memory of the fox pup’s friendship was strong upon him. But the Hired Man was not to be fooled.
In less time than it takes to tell it, he was out circling the field, gun in hand. And the bright moonlight soon showed him where the cornstalks rustled with Frisky’s passing.
“Hi, there!” yelled the Hired Man, gun in hand, as he raced around the corn-field.
But Frisky was an excellent judge of distance, and he knew to a certainty that he was out of gun range.
He therefore deliberately stopped where he was and snatched a bite of his hen.