young beech-tree. And just as he might have expected--the boy had
disappeared.

But Smirre didn't have much time to think about him; for now the first
goose came back again from the lake and flew slowly under the canopy. In
spite of all his ill luck, Smirre was glad that she came back, and
darted after her with a high leap. But he had been in too much of a
hurry, and hadn't taken the time to calculate the distance, and he
landed at one side of the goose. Then there came still another goose;
then a third; a fourth; a fifth; and so on, until the angle closed in
with the old ice-gray one, and the big white one. They all flew low and
slow. Just as they swayed in the vicinity of Smirre Fox, they sank
down--kind of inviting-like--for him to take them. Smirre ran after them
and made leaps a couple of fathoms high--but he couldn't manage to get
hold of a single one of them.

It was the most awful day that Smirre Fox had ever experienced. The wild
geese kept on travelling over his head. They came and went--came and
went. Great splendid geese who had eaten themselves fat on the German
heaths and grain fields, swayed all day through the woods, and so close
to him that he touched them many times; yet he was not permitted to
appease his hunger with a single one of them.

The winter was hardly gone yet, and Smirre recalled nights and days when
he had been forced to tramp around in idleness, with not so much as a
hare to hunt, when the rats hid themselves under the frozen earth; and
when the chickens were all shut up. But all the winter's hunger had not
been as hard to endure as this day's miscalculations.

Smirre was no young fox. He had had the dogs after him many a time, and