clear that something must be done, and at once, too, or ruin would
swallow up the poultry firm.

Rightly or wrongly, we attributed the mischief to a certain
"silver-gray" that had several times been seen in the neighborhood
that autumn.

It would take far too much space to relate in detail the plans we
laid and put in execution to catch that fox during the next two
weeks. I recollect that we set three traps for him to no purpose,
and that we borrowed a fox-hound to hunt him with, but merely
succeeded in running him to the burrow in a neighboring rocky
hill-side, whence we found it quite impossible to dislodge the wily
fellow.

Meanwhile the fox (or foxes) had succeeded in getting two more of
the turkeys.

Heroes, it is said, are born of great crises. This dilemma of ours
developed Tom's genius.

"I'll have that fox," he said, when the traps failed; and when the
hound proved of no avail he still said: "I'll have him yet."

"But how?" I asked. Tom said he would show me. He brought a
two-bushel basket and went out into the fields. In the stone-heaps,
and beside the old logs and stumps, there were dozens of deserted
mouse-nests, each a wad of fine dry grass as large as a quart box.
These were gathered up, and filled the great basket.