Redpad galloped back across the field, his coat wet with dew and his tongue flopping out. Vix was already crouched over her kill. At his approach she glanced at him suspiciously, and for the first time in his life she growled at him—not the low lazy growl of an old vixen to her riotous cub, but the deep menacing rumble of one grown fox to another. For this, Redpad's first long chase and kill, was, so to speak, the day of his coming of age. Vix's instinct told her that the change had come. He was no longer the red, woolly cub who had tugged at her side, but a full-grown fox able to fend for himself, and also able to snatch the kill from her had he so chosen. Hence she snarled at him; and it was another proof that Redpad had passed the days of cubhood that he did not fly at her throat, as he assuredly would have done had any other fox used him so, but only hovered near to devour such morsels as she rejected. For it is one of the laws of the Fox Folk that a he-fox shall never attack a vixen to snatch her kill from her. It is a wise and good law, as are all those which are observed in the woods.
When Vix had eaten her fill she rose and quenched her great thirst in a stream. But only a little remained for Redpad, and his hunger was scarcely appeased when they trotted back to Knockdane on the hill in the grey dawn.
CHAPTER III
FIRST BLOOD
Vix lay under a bush with her brush curled round her nose and eyes. Only her ears, ever wakeful and alert, kept watch while she slept. It was six o'clock, and a still misty morning with a heavy dew over everything. Close by lay Redpad with his nose on his pads; but he slept more lightly than Vix, for he had eaten less than she had done after their hunting. Thus he was the first to wake at the sound of a yelp in the valley. He sat up with a whimper and looked at his mother. He expected her to leap up, but she only stretched out her forelegs lazily and closed her eyes again. Perhaps her heavy meal at dawn had blunted the senses which as a rule gave her such timely warning of danger. Redpad could neither see nor smell anything suspicious, but those noises had convinced him that all was not right. He cast a last look at Vix, and then trotted away among the bushes.
Presently he met an old badger plodding along. The badger was glancing back every now and then at the sound of a 'yow-yow-yow' in the valley; and by and by a hare scudded past in a panic. All the while the clamour was drawing nearer, and was interspersed with whip-cracking and shouts. It all sounded very loud and alarming to Redpad, who was accustomed to the stillness of the woods, and he decided to move on. He was cantering along a ride when suddenly, on turning a corner, he came full upon a horseman. The man stared at Redpad, and Redpad stared at the man for a few seconds, and then the former leaped into the bushes; but as he fled he heard a view-halloa behind him.
