in his hand intending to cut his own throat, for he was out of his
senses in this first paroxysm of grief. But his vixen was gone, at
which he looked about for a moment bewildered, and then enraged,
thinking that somebody must have taken the body.

The door of the garden being open he ran straight through it. Now this
door, which had been left ajar by Polly when she ran off, opened into a
little courtyard where the fowls were shut in at night; the woodhouse
and the privy also stood there. On the far side of it from the garden
gate were two large wooden doors big enough when open to let a cart
enter, and high enough to keep a man from looking over into the yard.

When Mr. Tebrick got into the yard he found his vixen leaping up at
these doors, and wild with terror, but as lively as ever he saw her in
his life. He ran up to her but she shrank away from him, and would then
have dodged him too, but he caught hold of her. She bared her teeth at
him but he paid no heed to that, only picked her straight up into his
arms and took her so indoors. Yet all the while he could scarce believe
his eyes to see her living, and felt her all over very carefully to find
if she had not some bones broken. But no, he could find none. Indeed it
was some hours before this poor silly gentleman began to suspect the
truth, which was that his vixen had practised a deception upon him, and
all the time he was bemoaning his loss in such heartrending terms, she
was only shamming death to run away directly she was able. If it had not
been that the yard gates were shut, which was a mere chance, she had got
her liberty by that trick. And that this was only a trick of hers to
sham dead was plain when he had thought it over. Indeed it is an old and
time-honoured trick of the fox. It is in Aesop and a hundred other
writers have confirmed it since. But so thoroughly had he been deceived
by her, that at first he was as much overcome with joy at his wife still