attentions of trappers and hounds. In that region, pink coats and hunting horses and foxhound packs were unknown. But many a mountain farmer eked out his lean income by faring afield with a brace of disreputable but reliable mongrel hounds and a fowling piece as disreputably reliable; eager for the flat price of $10 to $12 per skin offered by the nearest wholesale dealer. This sum of course was for the common red fox; silver foxes being as unknown to the region at large as were dinosaurs.

(The dealer paid the farmer-huntsman perhaps $11 per skin. The pelt was then cured and dressed and mounted and equipped with snappers; at a total price in labour and material of perhaps $6 at most. After which, in marketable form, it sold at retail from $60 to $75 or even higher. Thus, there was money for every one concerned—except possibly for the ultimate buyer.)

The two silver foxes had the forest and farmland largely to themselves. The few reds they met did not attack them or affiliate with them at that hungry time of year.

10The winter winds and the ice-storms made Whitefoot’s coat shine and thicken as never had it done on scientifically balanced rations. The life of the wild put new depth to Pitchdark’s narrow chest and gave her muscular power and sinew to spare. Quizzical Dame Nature had lifted them from man’s wisest care; as though in object lesson of her own infinitely more efficient methods for conditioning her children.

10

Late January brought a sore-throat thaw and with it a melting of drift and ice-pack. Incidentally it ushered in the yearly vulpine mating season.

Spring was early that year. But before the frost was out of the ground, Pitchdark had chosen her nursery. It was by no means so elaborate nor sanitary as had been the costly brood-nests at the kennel. Indeed it would have struck horror to the heart of any scientific breeder.

For it was merely a woodchuck hole in an upland meadow, at the forest edge, a short mile from a straggling farmstead. Even here Whitefoot’s inspired prowess as a digger was not called into play. His sole share toward securing the home was to thrash the asthmatically indignant old woodchuck that had dug the burrow. Then Pitchdark made her way cautiously down the hole and proceeded to enlarge it a little at the shallow bottom. That was all the home-making done by the pair.

Then, of a windy night, just before the first of April, the vixen did not 

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