between congratulation over a successful stalk after nights of hungry,
patient wandering, and pity for the little tragedy told so vividly by
converging trails, a few red drops in the snow, a bit of fur blown
about by the wind, or a feather clinging listlessly to the underbrush.
In such a tramp one learns much of fox-ways and other ways that can
never be learned elsewhere.

* * * * *

The fox whose life has been spent on the hillsides surrounding a New
England village seems to have profited by generations of experience.
He is much more cunning every way than the fox of the wilderness. If,
for instance, a fox has been stealing your chickens, your trap must be
very cunningly set if you are to catch him. It will not do to set it
near the chickens; no inducement will be great enough to bring him
within yards of it. It must be set well back in the woods, near one of
his regular hunting grounds. Before that, however, you must bait the
fox with choice bits scattered over a pile of dry leaves or chaff,
sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month, till he comes regularly.
Then smoke your trap, or scent it; handle it only with gloves; set it
in the chaff; scatter bait as usual; and you have one chance of
getting him, while he has still a dozen of getting away. In the
wilderness, on the other hand, he may be caught with half the
precaution. I know a little fellow, whose home is far back from the
settlements, who catches five or six foxes every winter by ordinary
wire snares set in the rabbit paths, where foxes love to hunt.

In the wilderness one often finds tracks in the snow, telling how a
fox tried to catch a partridge and only succeeded in frightening it
into a tree. After watching a while hungrily,--one can almost see him