Lives of the Fur Folk

by Maud D. Haviland

When Jack Skehan came up at eight o'clock, two lambs were missing. He called a conclave of neighbours, and they sat in judgment upon Redpad's real and supposed delinquencies. Jack Skehan, who was very wrathful, purposed to put a notice to 'foxhunters and others' in the local press, and resort to drastic measures by means of strychnine; but the rest of the council shook their heads, for they had no wish to banish the hounds from Knockdane. Ultimately they all went down to consult Paddy Magragh, whose reputation for wisdom was deservedly great where animals were concerned. Paddy was smoking in his cabin, and after he had heard all that they had to say, he said: ''Twas a dog, not a fox, took the lamb lasht night, I'm thinking.' And this opinion he held to in spite of all arguments against it.

Nothing occurred that night, and the following day Paddy Magragh went alone to the field on the hill, and searched it thoroughly. He came upon the carcase of the lamb in the gorse, and he grinned, for he knew the ways of the Fur Folk, and their law, better than most of the men round Knockdane. The next day, however, there was great consternation. Jack Skehan's flock was untouched, but Dinny Purcell had left his ewes in a field adjoining the wood, and a young lamb lay torn and draggled upon the grass. The remains were taken triumphantly to Paddy Magragh, and the foxlike print of the fangs displayed; and secretly even his conviction was shaken, although he declared stoutly that it was a dog and not a fox that had done the deed.

With one accord it was decreed that poison should be laid down; and Jack Skehan went to Skelagh and bought strychnine, ostensibly to poison rats. Paddy Magragh had manfully opposed this scheme, for besides the fact that every fox hunted from Knockdane meant ten shillings in his pocket, he had 'stopped' the woods for twenty years, and took more pride in his foxes than he cared to own.

'If ye'll do as I tell ye,' he declared, 'ye'll lay the mate on a bit o' paper, an' if it's a fox, he'll never touch it at all, for he'd be afeard o' the paper, but if it's a dog he'll ate it.'

And this was the utmost they would grant him. Indeed, if they had believed him, he could not even have extorted this concession.

They 'doctored' some rabbit paunches with strychnine cunningly enough, and laid them seductively in the field. It was just before dark when they returned home, so they did not see how the magpie fluttered down a few minutes later, and spying the bait, sidled up to it. He did not altogether like the white paper, but he was hungry, and a paunch was a paunch. He picked it up gingerly and carried it off, for a magpie does not care to eat where he has killed—he is too accustomed to traps. Even an egg is impaled on his bill and conveyed away. Luckily for this magpie, however, it so happened that when he was flying into the wood he accidentally let the choice morsel fall out of sight among the trees. Therefore, although he went supperless to bed, he was fortunate in that he roosted in the branches that night, instead of lying claws upwards on the ground. Redpad found that paunch two days afterwards and ate a piece; but something peculiar about the morsel—in its taste or odour—warned him, and although he was very sick for some hours, yet he eventually recovered.

There was great jubilation the next morning when it was found that some of the poison had been taken; but the triumph was short-lived, for the following night another lamb had disappeared. The next evening Jack Skehan took his old gun and the little whippet-nosed dog who worked for him among the sheep all day, and sat up to watch. The dog sat beside him on a stone, and when he was not watching his master for orders, he gazed serenely above the heads of the sheep. Nothing, however, came, and at six o'clock, tired and chilled, Jack Skehan went home.

The poison was still there, but Redpad, made wary by his former experience with the rabbit paunch, passed it by, and besides, the mysterious rustling of the white paper underneath scared him. The real sheep slayer never touched it, for he seemed to prefer warm meat to cold.