O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!"

"That is one of my mottoes!" cried my companion with evident pleasure.
"Let us go and quote it to our fox-hunters!"

"I wonder how the fox is getting on," I said.

"If he is any sort of fox, he is safe enough as yet, we may be sure.
They are wonderful creatures. It is not surprising that mankind has
always looked upon Reynard as almost a human being--if not more--for
there is something quite uncanny in his instincts, and the cool,
calculating way in which he uses them. He is come and gone like a ghost.
One moment you were sure you saw him clearly close by and the next he is
gone--who knows where? He can run almost as swiftly as light, and as
softly as a shadow; and in his wildest dash, what a sure judgment he has
for the lie of the ground, how unerringly--and at a moment when a
mistake is death--he selects his cover! How learned, too, he is in
his knowledge of the countryside! There is not a dry ditch, or a
water-course, or an old drain, or a hole in a bank for miles around that
is not mysteriously set down in the map he carries in his graceful,
clever head; and one need hardly say that all the suitable hiding-places
in and around farm-yards are equally well known to him. Then withal he
is so brave. How splendidly, when wearied out, and hopelessly tracked
down, with the game quite up, he will turn on his pursuers, and die with
his teeth fast in his enemy's throat!"

"I believe you are a fox-hunter in disguise," I laughed.

"Well, I have hunted as a boy," he said, "and I know something of what
those red-coated gentlemen are feeling. But soon I got more interested