sleepless nights, and not caring for his person, in a few months he was
worn to the shadow of himself. His cheeks were sunk in, his eyes hollow
but excessively brilliant, and his whole body had lost flesh, so that
looking at him the wonder was that he was still alive.

Now that the hunting season was over he had less anxiety for her, yet
even so he was not positive that the hounds had not got her. For between
the time of his setting her free, and the end of the hunting season
(just after Easter), there were but three vixens killed near. Of those
three one was a half-blind or wall-eyed, and one was a very grey
dull-coloured beast. The third answered more to the description of his
wife, but that it had not much black on the legs, whereas in her the
blackness of the legs was very plain to be noticed. But yet his fear
made him think that perhaps she had got mired in running and the legs
being muddy were not remarked on as black. One morning the first week
in May, about four o'clock, when he was out waiting in the little copse,
he sat down for a while on a tree stump, and when he looked up saw a fox
coming towards him over the ploughed field. It was carrying a hare over
its shoulder so that it was nearly all hidden from him. At last, when it
was not twenty yards from him, it crossed over, going into the copse,
when Mr. Tebrick stood up and cried out, "Silvia, Silvia, is it you?"

The fox dropped the hare out of his mouth and stood looking at him, and
then our gentleman saw at the first glance that this was not his wife.
For whereas Mrs. Tebrick had been of a very bright red, this was a
swarthier duller beast altogether, moreover it was a good deal larger
and higher at the shoulder and had a great white tag to his brush. But
the fox after the first instant did not stand for his portrait you may
be sure, but picked up his hare and made off like an arrow.