Master Reynard: The History of a Fox

by Jane Fielding; J. C. Tregarthen

Presently I heard two men below, and the door closed behind them.

"He's up the chimbley and safe enuf. You hold the sack whilst I stir him up with this eer pole."

Two awful thumps I endured without flinching, but the third knocked my hind-legs from under me, and I fell all of a heap into the bag.

"So far, so good. Now we'll tie a stone to the sack and drop the lot into the deep corner of the goslin' pool. The varmint must die. I'll go and fetch a bit of rope."

Whilst the farmer was gone the man opened the mouth of the sack and looked down on me. Not satisfied, apparently, with the half light of the outhouse, he took me into the open and peered at me again. I thought I recognized him the first time he inspected me; but now, with the morning sun on his ruddy cheeks I was quite sure. He was the first man I had seen, the man who was on the cairn the morning my mother was killed by the pack; he was the man who, I felt certain, had stopped the earths. I was calm now. I had gone through the agony of death, but still I did not want to die. Life was sweet, very sweet. I was not like a mangy old fox; I was in the pride of my cub-hood.

"What a beauty!" said the earth-stopper, as he continued to gaze at me. "What a grand fox, to be sure! If An'rew can save 'ee, then thee shan't die, now there." Saying this he let go his hold on the sack and turned away. You can depend upon it I made a quick exit and sped off. I hope no serious harm came to Andrew.

I sought a new home, looking therefor on the great moors. For a time I had a life comparatively free from care, but though few of the changes in the autumn life of the wild escaped me, I was slow to interpret those signs that foretold the severe weather that was to suddenly set in. It is, however, hardly matter for wonder that I was blind to the warnings they conveyed, for the frosts of our peninsula are, as a rule, so slight as to relax their feeble grip by noon-day; even the smallest birds suffer little discomfort. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that migratory birds flock to our shores because of the mildness of the climate and the hospitality its feeding grounds offer; but this is only the view of a fox, who welcomes these aliens, and takes heavy toll of their number. Whatever the cause may be, there is no doubt about the fact. This year, however, the flocks of fieldfares, always the first to arrive, were earlier than was their wont. I noted, too, that despite the normal mildness of the weather, our few hibernating creatures suddenly withdrew into their winter quarters; the hedge-hogs to the drifts of leaves and hollow holes of dead trees, and the dormice to their nests in the low bushes. These incidents did not seem to concern me; though I was surprised at the abandonment of the fen by the otters, till presently I learnt that the late salmon had already passed up the river. That seemed to explain it; for the otters always follow the salmon, as every fox knows who has had the luck to find a half-eaten fish on the bank.

I am convinced that all these creatures were conscious of approaching hard weather; and when I discovered that the squirrels with which the wood abounded, had sought their nests in the top-most branches of the red pines, a sense of the evil times before us came to me, too.

I noticed while I lay from dawn to sunset amongst the undergrowth that a strange calm, presaging sudden change of weather, brooded over the solemn wood. The silence was unbroken until twilight, when the starlings settled in and mingled their vespers with the soughing of the rising wind. Then when I left my lair, threaded the boles of the pines and came to the beeches, the leaves crackled under foot, a sign of cold, dry weather; but I did not feel the keen wind until I gained the shoulder of the ridge to the north, which is crowned by the tor. At midnight on the moors the cold became intense; when, near dawn, I crossed the upland road which since some heavy rains had been a quagmire, I found it hard as rock, and the backwater of the pool above the ford was frozen to the edge of the current. On the marshy ground below, the cracking of the ice under my tread disturbed several snipe; and between the alders and my own lair two woodcock got up, which, from their weary flight, I should say had only just arrived.

My snug kennel under the furze looked doubly snug that cold, hard dawn; and whatever privations the future might have in store, there was at least every token of present abundance.