Outside the cave, in the sunshine, the vixen was sniffing and nosing at
the body of the puppy she had killed. She presented her flank to
Black-and-Gray's view, and, for herself, could see nothing inside the
cave now. Black-and-Gray had seen his sister slain. The blood of great
aristocrats and heroes was in his veins. His wrath was tremendous,
overwhelming, in fact, and, but for the support of the cave's wall,
would certainly have been too much for his still uncertain sense of
balance. Suddenly now his ancestry spoke in this undeveloped creature.
Determination took and shook him, and spurred him forward. With a sort
of miniature roar--the merest little mixture of breathless growl, snarl,
and embryonic bark--he blundered forth from his dark corner, hurtling
over the cave's floor at a gait partaking of roll, crawl, and gallop,
and flung himself straight at the well-furred throat of the unsuspecting
vixen.

Even as an accomplished swordsman may be wounded by the unexpectedness
of the onslaught of some ignorant youngster who hardly knows a sword's
pommel from its point, so this murderously inclined vixen was bowled
over by the astounding attack of Master Black-and-Gray. The slope was
very steep and the pup's spring a bolt from the blue. The vixen slipped,
lost her footing, and went slithering down the dry grass from the ledge,
snapping at the air as she slid, with bites, any one of which would
easily have closed Black-and-Gray's career if they had reached him. But
the puppy was quite powerless to put on the brake, so to say, and his
progress down the slope was therefore far more rapid than that of the
vixen. The breath was entirely knocked out of Black-and-Gray when he
finally was brought up, all standing, by a sharp little rise of ground
alongside the gap past which one saw across the Sussex weald from
Desdemona's cave. Here it seemed he must pay the ultimate penalty of his