When I reached the earth the vixen and my sisters were lying near the entrance, looking as happy and contented as mother and whelps can look. With misfortune written on my crestfallen face, I stood before them bedraggled and panting, as complete a picture of misery as can well be imagined. My mother looked me up and down with sympathetic eyes that told her thoughts, and though she never said a word I read in their varying expressions: "You are miserable and discomfited, my cub; you are evidently paying dear for your freedom. Nevertheless I admire your independence and, for all your wayward spirit, I am proud of you."
Crimson streaks marked the low sky to the east before I followed the others to the den for, rather than retire supperless, I stayed outside to crunch a few dry bones. It had been a most unsatisfactory night's hunting, and, though I tried hard to get the evil-looking brute with the webbed feet out of my mind, I seemed, even till I fell asleep, to be watching that rascally otter lying his full length and holding in his fore-paws the fattest mallard I had ever seen.
Despite my disappointment and fear, I resolved to visit the fen again a few nights later, and it vexed me greatly when the vixen objected and insisted that I should join her and my sisters in an expedition to the hill beyond it. I was sulky at the start, and lagged behind the others all the way across the marshland, but I closed up when we breasted the hill, and shook off the last traces of ill-temper on seeing the vixen steal towards an enclosed field some little distance down from the crest. I watched her closely whilst she reconnoitered at a gap in the rude stone wall, and, from the fixity of her gaze, felt almost sure that she espied game. All doubt was dispelled when, with the stealthiest of movements, she came back to me and, as if I was the most amiable cub in the world and worthy of the post of honor, led me round to the meuse through which the game had entered the field, and left me to watch it.
As I lay there, within a spring of the scent-tainted run that recalled a trail I had once followed on the fen, I became uncontrollably curious to see the animal that had but shortly before passed along it. I felt sure the creature was in the field, and no sooner had the vixen disappeared round the corner of the long wall than I left my hiding-place, crawled up the face of the enclosure as quietly as a fly, and peeped through a break in the top whence a stone had fallen. Ah! there he was, for all the world like an immense rabbit, nibbling the clover right out in the middle of the square field. Of course I ought to have returned to my ambush at once, but curiosity held me to the spot, and whilst I was taking a last look, I caught sight of the vixen stealing over the wall on the further side into the tangle that filled the corner and, in fact, grew all round the field at the foot of the wall. In this she was lost to view, till presently her mask appeared again between some seeding thistles about thirty yards from the unsuspicious hare.
Now began one of the most thrilling stalks I ever witnessed, though, owing to the astonishing way the vixen hid herself, I could see little of her but her ears. To have rendered herself so inconspicuous she must have grovelled along on her belly in some slight hollow of the ground not visible to me; for the clover was not more than an inch high and of itself afforded very little concealment. The nearer she got the more excited I became; and for the life of me I could not understand—even now I cannot understand—why the hare, of all animals the timidest and most watchful, neither saw, heard, nor scented her. Inch by inch the clever little stalker wound her way until nearer approach without discovery must have been impossible. I was wondering why she delayed making one of her lightning-like rushes, when, with a tremendous bound, the hare started off in a direction wide of my station. The vixen, who was in swift pursuit, made a desperate effort to turn him; but in this she would have failed, despite her wonderful fleetness, had not my little sister, whether by accident or design I do not know, suddenly showed herself at the gate for which the hare was heading. This had the effect of sending him towards the meuse I had been set to watch and of reminding me of my duty.
The hare was yet some thirty yards down the hill but coming like the wind, when I dropped quietly into my ambush and gathered my legs under me. What a row he made as he dashed through the brambles and came through the hole at the foot of the wall! Never shall I forget the excitement of the moment when, with his ears thrown back on his shoulders, he came in sight. I made my spring as he flashed by, and though I only knocked him over, I was on him and bore him down before he could recover himself. The vixen, who came up the next moment, was delighted to find me standing over my first hare; and when in response to her call my sisters joined us, she distributed the portions into which she had broken it up. There was much chattering over the feast—the contented chattering that attends good hunting.
Thus did our mother teach us to act in concert—the method sometimes employed by dog and vixen if hares are scarce and wild, but more commonly adopted when driving rabbits from a brake where there are no holes in which they can get to ground.
Our supper over, the vixen led us along the crest of the hill to a small clump of wind-clipt pines, which are still standing, whence can be obtained a view of the fen on the one side and of the sand-hills on the other. This was my first sight of the dunes and of the farm-buildings on the edge of them. Whilst we stood there a loud bark, thrice repeated, came from within the trees about the buildings.
"What is that?" I asked, somewhat alarmed.
"That is the voice of a dog—the voice of an enemy."