When you meet a Fox, there are nine surprises. Five of them are his and the other four are yours. You may be looking for him, but he is not looking for you; consequently, he is more surprised than you are.

The following Summer, when I went to my cabin, I found it occupied. By this time I should have been accustomed to such things, but, strangely enough, I was not. To make it worse, the new occupant was not one I could turn out, being a relation. He had been a distant relation hitherto, but was now a near one.

Our family has intermarried a great deal with the descendants of European royalties, and Uncle Antonio was of the great and well-known family of the CÆsars, who, if my readers will remember, used to rank high in Rome. The line of descent was somewhat blurred, it is true, but Uncle had a Roman nose and was given to roaming about the country.

By profession, he was a musician—one of those rarely talented people whose genius is infinitely above such minor details as technique. Rubenstein, according to his biographers, used to make bad mistakes in reading his own music, and nearly everyone who has played him has, at some time or other, followed in his gifted footsteps.

Uncle was another Rubenstein, as regards the mistakes. His soul, lifted above all mundane things, soared to meet the thought of the composer, and his fingers stumbled over the keys. This would not have bothered some people, but Uncle was sensitive and it annoyed him, so at length he had an instrument especially made to suit his own needs.

It was an organ of the regulation type, small and compact, yet with a glorious volume of tone that would have delighted Wagner. Connected with the interior by a wonderfully scientific system of levers, was the motive power. The superior form of the instrument made possible some changes in the manner of playing it.

Instead of pushing on the keys, in the ordinary, common way, my Uncle’s organ was played with a rotary sweep of the whole arm, the hand, meanwhile, firmly grasping the lever. This enabled him to put more expression into the music. I would like to say right here that my Uncle’s organ was invented long before the day of patent piano-players, and that we, as a family, have about decided to prosecute the makers of these cheap, clap-trap instruments, in behalf of Uncle Antonio.

It was gratifying to see Uncle’s face when he played. With all mechanical difficulties overcome, he was free to give his entire attention to the fine shadings and hidden meanings of the composition. It was pleasing, also, to note how close he came to the hearts of the people. Even the little children would come and stand around Uncle Antonio when he played upon his organ, and musicians in the neighbourhood, gnashing their teeth in jealous rage, would close their windows to keep my Uncle’s notable accomplishments from belittling their own. It is ever thus. Upon my own trail have sprung up a score or more of writers on Natural History—but I must not say more, lest I be thought too personal.

Uncle Antonio, also, was a lover of the wild animals. He had one pet, in particular, which meant much to him—a genuine African Monkey, imported at great expense and difficulty. He had taught the intelligent animal a great many cunning tricks—in fact, Jocko could do almost everything but speak. Through Jocko I had first come to an understanding of Uncle Antonio. There is an old saying to the effect that, in order to know a man, you must first meet his Dog, and then see them together. In the same way, you must have known Jocko in order to comprehend my Uncle.

I was within a quarter of a mile of my cabin, my pulses bounding with happy anticipation, when a low moan, which seemingly came from a broken heart, struck my ear. I paused and stood like a marble statue—a trick I had learned from my kindred of the wild. Then the curious sound was repeated.

Stealthily, I made my way toward the cabin, but I was not yet so skilled in woodcraft that my feet made no noise. Before I reached the door, my Uncle came out, and a glance at his face showed me that he had met with a great loss.

Like other geniuses, Uncle was somewhat careless in his attire. As a family, we had often laboured with him on this point, but to no avail. The unfettered spirit of the great will express itself in outward semblance, and at length we gave it up. Uncle wore a pair of trousers which, at first sight, did not appear to be his, and a negligee shirt, wide open at the throat, like a poet’s. A bright red handkerchief, carelessly knotted, took the place of a tie, and his coat was his velvet one, to which he had been strongly attached for many years. Small hoops of gold, similar to those worn by Venetian noblemen, hung from the pendant lobes of his musical ears.

Seeing me, he eyed me for a moment in great astonishment. “Hella da dev!” he exclaimed. “What for you coma da here?”

I can never hope to describe, in English, the charm of my Uncle’s foreign accent. Long years of residence in this country had not eradicated it, and his low, melodious voice, full of unexpected harmonies, gave a lyric quality to his conversation.

“I am here,” I returned, “because this is my cabin. I might ask the same question of you,” I added, playfully.

“Hella da dev!” said Uncle once more. This quaint, foreign phrase, indicating a pleasant surprise, often appeared in his speech. “My father-in-law, he giva da coop to you? It is astonish!”

“Yes,” I sighed, “it is.” Grandfather was one of those thrifty pioneers who held on to a cent until the Indian howled.

Uncle sat down and wiped his forehead with the fancy, coloured handkerchief which was an heirloom in his family. This was quite in keeping with the situation, for I have often known the unexpected sight of a relative to produce cold perspiration on the skin of a sensitive, emotional person.

“Listen,” said Uncle, struggling to his feet. “I tella you. Here I come two, tree day back. Maka da gr-rand professional tour through ze back countree, where zees poor pipple, zey haf no moosic at all. It ees pitiful.”

I nodded. Such generosity was like Uncle.

“Getta da cent,” he resumed, “getta da tree cent. Zees grateful pipple, what haf no moosic, zey nevaire giva da nick, no, nevaire! Wis Jocko, zen, I meet zees place, where I stay for ze little res’ away from ze unappreciatif pipple. An’ here, what you zink? Jocko haf been stole from me!” Here his voice rose to an agonised shriek: “Jocko haf been stole!”

His grief broke through the dam and overflowed. The sight of a strong man’s tears is always terrible, and I turned away until the first outburst subsided.

Then I advanced to comfort the stricken man. “Perhaps, Uncle Antonio,” I said, kindly, “Jocko ran away of his own accord.”

“Hella da dev!” cried Uncle, clenching his hands. “What are zees pipple I haf been married to! Jocko, da monk, run away? Nevaire! Listen. Tree year now, Jocko and I maka da professional tour together. Jocko getta da cent from da audience, bringa him to me. Smarta da monk—weara da asbestos glove, taka da warm cent also. Jocko run away? Nevaire! Jocko haf been stole!”

After long consideration, I thought so, too. I knew very well that if any human being had stolen the Monkey, he would have been returned long before this. My memory of the animal was that he was rather troublesome, but of course I did not wish to say so, for fear of hurting my Uncle’s feelings.

Eliminating the human element from the proposition, there remained only one possible conclusion. Some animal had done it, in response to that merciless law of the wilderness, which bids the wood people seek and slay and devour; the law of claw and tooth and fang, from which there is no appeal.

Jocko had not been taken from his high perch—this left tramps and neighbours out of the question, also Coons and Owls. He had not been left partly eaten, so that Weasels, Pole-Cats, or Minks were not responsible. What animal could have taken Jocko away bodily? My quick, active mind immediately answered: “A Fox!”

I said nothing to Uncle Antonio of my suspicion. In the morning, when I went down to the lake for my bath, I found a foxglove which surely had not been there the night before. It was a mother, then, foraging for her young. I wondered how they liked Jocko. He was so disagreeable to me, personally, that he would certainly have disagreed with me, even if I had eaten him.

The next day, my suspicions were confirmed in an unexpected manner. The ivy which grew around my door was pulled down and badly trampled upon. I remembered the old saying, then: “Little foxes spoil the vines.” The mother, growing bolder, must have brought her young into my dooryard.

When you are troubled by a mother Fox, you may know that her den is far away. She never draws attention to herself in her own neighbourhood. When you are not troubled by a mother Fox, you may know that one is near at hand. This great truth is familiar to every Little Brother of the Woods.

One bright afternoon, later in the week, I took my field-glass and went to a lofty hill near by. I climbed to the summit and from that point of vantage surveyed the surrounding country, looking for the den. I found it, at last, under an overhanging rock, far to the south.

The mother Fox sat in the doorway with her sewing, making another glove, doubtless, to replace the one she had so strangely lost, while her little ones gambolled about her. I never saw more than three at any one time, and so I concluded that there were only three in the family.

I felt wicked, spying upon this charming domestic picture, even though it was through my field-glass and I was so far away that they would never know they were observed. Here I was proved wrong, however. The weary seamstress laid her work aside and stood up, brushing the threads from her lap. She yawned, smoothed her back hair a bit, and was about to go inside, when she paused.

With every sense alert, she leaned forward, shaded her eyes with her hand, and stared straight at me—the man with the field-glass on the summit of the hill so far away. I was embarrassed, but I did not move. When she had satisfied her curiosity, she grinned at me and then, unmistakably, winked.

She seemed to know that I was far different from that barbarous race of men who would hunt her and her babies with dogs and guns. Her composure was so perfect, her intuition so swift, and her wink so suggestive of amiable deviltry, that I at once named her “Hoop-La,” which is an Indian word signifying lady-like mischief, and so she remains in my annals to this day.

We knew where each other lived, and we were friends—so much was already established. I felt sure now that Hoop-La would visit me when she knew I was at home, perhaps bringing her little ones with her, but the question quickly arose in my mind: how should I dispose of Uncle Antonio?

That night, as delicately as I could, I told him that I had enjoyed his brief stay with me very much and that I was sorry he must go.

“Mus’ go?” repeated Uncle, pricking up his ears, “for w’y you say zis? I haf no mentions made of ze departure—it is wis me you haf someone else maka da confuse.”

“Perhaps,” I answered, with rare tact. “My dreams are sometimes very vivid.”

“I see,” said Uncle Antonio, with a child-like smile upon his calm, high-bred face; “you hitta da pipe.”

I did not enlighten him, for it is bad manners to contradict a guest. You must never insult people in your own house—always go to theirs.

“I have come, dear Uncle,” I continued, “to study Unnatural History. It is an absorbing pursuit, and I fear you will find me poor company.”

“No,” returned Uncle Antonio, in his gentle, foreign way, “zat no maka da dif to me. I lika you mucha da bet when you say nossing—nossing ’t all. Ze more you keepa da still, ze more your Oncle lofe you.”

With his fine comprehension, he had instantly penetrated to the heart of things. “Staya da here,” he said, with touching dignity, “until Jocko maka da return trip. Jocko always bringa cent when he coma da back.”

In some way, it reminded me of those stories of New England, so plentiful in our day and generation, and always so beautifully written, where somebody is always waiting for somebody else, who never comes. In those rare instances where the long wait is rewarded, the emotion of the lost one’s arrival has always been attenuated into nothingness. In a reminiscent mood, also, I mused upon an epigram my sister made, on the tenth anniversary of her wedding day. “Before marriage,” she said, with a little choke in her voice, “woman spends all her life waiting for her husband. After marriage, she spends three quarters of it in the same way.” My brother-in-law, I may say, in explanation, was one of those people who make it the chief business of their lives to be late to everything.

I left a note for Hoop-La under a boulder by the path which I felt sure she would take when she grew bolder and came to visit me. The next day, when I went to look for it, it was gone, and I was pleased to think she had it. At supper, however, Uncle Antonio produced it from the secret recesses of his attire.

“I getta da dead next to you,” he said, with a merry laugh. “You gotta da sweetheart here. Zat is ze reason w’y you maka da chase of your poor old Oncle out. Me no leava da monk.”

The ensuing quarter of an hour was very unpleasant for me, though at length I convinced him that I had nothing to do with the note. He would not accept my word until I wrote a page or so for him, in another hand. I was foxy enough to learn to write three or four different hands at school and it has come in handy early and often since.

I soon saw, however, that I should not be troubled much with Uncle Antonio. Every day he took long, cross-country tramps, “to finda da monk,” as he pathetically said, and often having disagreements with cross country tramps whom he met on the road. But he did not mind, and his faith and hope were absolutely without limit.

Hoop-La came one day when he was absent. I first felt her bright eyes upon me from a thicket close at hand, then I saw her tawny orange-coloured fur, and presently she approached, walking on her hind legs, with her magnificent tail thrown over one arm. Her tail was her principal adornment; her paws were her chief features. She was doing the kangaroo walk to perfection, and when I went in and brought out a paper of cookies she did the cake walk also.

She sat near me for some time, contemplating me gravely. She could not speak my language and I did not know hers, nevertheless a perfect understanding was soon in operation between us. A Fox looks beyond your eyes to your inner thought, which is not especially difficult, for the thought-tank, as students of physiology all know, is the padding around the optic nerve. She had not brought her fancy work—I suppose she did not feel that she knew me well enough, or else, like many human ladies, she did not fancy work.

At all events, it was a very formal call. At the close of it, she bowed and went away with great dignity. Had I followed her I would have seen capers, tail-chasing, quick turns, high kicks, and flying jumps, then a mad gallop home, but I did not know this until I got back to the city and read it in a book. Some of the Little Brothers of the Woods have seen a great deal that I have unaccountably missed, but because they have been more fortunate than I have, it does not necessarily follow that they have lied about it.

I never saw Hoop-La’s husband, and concluded, therefore, that she was a widow. Her ways were sufficiently winning to justify my hypothesis, and she was as clever as any of them.

One time, she was unjustly suspected of stealing some Chickens, and the Hounds were set upon her trail. I had gone to the hill I have spoken of before, to add up my accounts on the summit, and I saw them, far in the distance, headed straight for the open field just below me, where Hoop-La was fixing up their day’s work for them.

First, she ran all around the field three times, then took a long jump toward the centre, and wove herself in and out in a circle. Then she took another jump and wove more circles, and so on, for the better part of an hour. All the time, the deep bellowing of the Hounds came nearer, but Hoop-La did not seem to be at all alarmed. It was not until the leader of the pack struck the field and caught the scent that she took any notice of them at all.

By a series of swift and wonderfully clever sorties, which included high jumps and frequent wetting of her feet in the brook, she gained the hill. Then she came up beside me, taking care, however, to keep on a small patch of orange-coloured grass which exactly matched her coat. The wonder of it was not that the grass should match Hoop-La, but that she should know that it did.

Down below, in the field, the hunt went on. There must have been five hundred Dogs there, or else they ran so fast that they looked like more. The pasture seemed to be one solid Dog, circling in and out, jumping, leaping, and weaving strange designs upon the green sod below.

Suddenly the significance burst upon me. With her own clever body, sentient and alive from nose to tip of tail, Hoop-La had made a quilt pattern, and the Dogs were following it. It was like a game of living chess, such as the barbarian kings used to play before the Republican party got into power.

Have any of my readers ever seen a Fox laugh? Hoop-La sat beside me, with her hands on her sides, rocking and swaying in a spasm of merriment. Salt tears of joy rolled down her cheeks and made little rivulets through her fur. By looking at these narrow lines, I perceived, for the first time, the wonderful pinky fairness of her complexion.

Meanwhile the Dogs wound in and out on the trail, the pattern becoming more and more distinct every minute. When there was a space in the swiftly moving mass, I could see deep scars upon the surface of the field, and this seemed to amuse Hoop-La all the more. She laughed until I was afraid her hysterics would bring the Dogs upon us. I was sure she could take care of herself, but I was not anxious to have my own footsteps dogged by that pastureful of howling fiends.

One by one, the Dogs dropped out. Some of them lay flat on their backs, utterly exhausted, and breathing like so many locomotives. Enough short pants were made in that field that afternoon to clothe the inmates of all the orphan asylums in North America, but Mother Nature is ever too generous with her material—in spots.

Hoop-La was still laughing and it got worse every minute. Remembering her sex and thinking to divert her, I took a handful of coins out of my pocket and laid them on the grass beside her. She pawed them over without interest for a moment or two, then her eye lit upon a penny which was evidently fresh from the mint.

She played with it for a time, enjoying the glint of the sun on the shining copper, then her face suddenly illumined with a bright idea. Before I realised what she was going to do, she took it in her mouth, walked over to the edge of the hill, sat down, and with a precision of aim which was unusual in her sex, threw it straight down into the pasture.

I was aghast. Hoop-La had deliberately given the Dogs a new scent!

Still, they received it without enthusiasm and she seemed very much disappointed. I knew one thing that she did not; namely, that Dogs are instinctively afraid of coppers.

When the baffled animals went home, Hoop-La descended into the field and retrieved her financial losses. I suppose she took the coin home to her children, and after familiarising them with its outward appearance, she told them: “That is man-scent.”

A week or so after that, when I sat upon the summit of the hill, with my field-glass fixed upon the roomy piazzas of her home, it fell to my good-fortune to see her teaching her little ones. She was a tender mother, but a severe task-mistress, and plied the rod liberally when they made mistakes.

She taught them how to play dead, how to manage their trails so the Dogs could not step on them, how to pick a Squirrel’s teeth and bones, how to catch Field Mice without a trap, how to hunt Mares’ nests, how to play Leap Frog, and how to sing the woodland spring song. I have jotted down the words:

This is the water song of the Fox family and corresponds to a college yell. Many a night, you can hear it over the hillsides, in deep, loud-mouthed bays that brook no delay and harbour a sinister meaning.

Among other things, she taught them these proverbs:

“Never sleep on your track until you have curled it up so much that it makes a soft bed.

“When your leader fails you, shuffle the pack for a new deal and turn up another trump.

“Money may not be your best friend, but it is the quickest to act in time of trouble. Therefore, trust your scent.

“Dried up water never runs.

“Do not sleep in the river-bed when the springs that used to be there have rusted away.

“Never travel by daylight if you can help it. Take the night express and be there in the morning.

“If you don’t know what it is, bring it to Mamma. She will put you on.

“Never hunt for Hens in a boys’ college, nor for Mice in a female seminary.

“A gasolene automobile overpowers everything but a Skunk.

“Don’t sit on the paint.

“If you climb telegraph poles to do the tight-rope act on the wires, don’t eat the currents.

“Take a yellow journal with you when you are going where there is no orange-coloured grass.

“If you can’t smell anything, the wind is wrong, and other people are smelling you. Turn around and it will be all right.

“Never feel ashamed of your clothes. Fox fur may not be Sealskin, but it is expensive enough to be decent.

“Never throw an Indian off the scent. It is against the coin-mutilation law.

“Try to use other people’s experience and profit by bad example. Pattern after the Indians, who never moccasin.

“Let the Snakes alone; fur boas do not grow wild.

“When you drop your Rabbit’s foot, look out for falling hair.”

The instruction was interrupted by a strange animal flopping wildly about in front of the den, as though attached to a chain. It was smaller than Hoop-La and of a different colour. It had bright red on its head and body, and, even at that distance, I could see a tail long enough to make a three-volume novel. Then my heart gave a violent lunge into my ribs. Unquestionably, it was Jocko!

I put the glass down, my hands trembling. Why had Hoop-La monkeyed with Uncle Antonio’s pet? And what would Uncle Antonio do if he should hit upon the truth? Would he not shoot Hoop-La and all her children and make a Winter coat for Jocko out of their complexions? Echo answered me—he would.

My quick, active mind was partially paralysed. The cogs were rusty and the chains of thought creaked over them without producing any power. What should I do?

Should I remain silent, while my blood-relation ate his heart out and all the provisions I could buy? Should I listen, night after night, to the heartrending strains of Bedelia, syncopated by a strong man’s sobs? Every night, when playing that painful melody, Uncle was overcome at the line: “I’ve made up my mind to steal you.” “That is it,” he would shriek, “my Jocko haf been stole!” By a wonderful modulation, too swift for the ordinary ear to perceive, Uncle Antonio always changed off to Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas, and played it twice before he ceased.

Obviously, it was up to me. In my hands were the tangled threads of Fate, which I and I alone could unkink.

I did not sleep for three nights. On the fourth day, I walked out a little way from the cabin—perhaps eight or ten miles. In the woods I met Hoop-La under strange circumstances.

She was walking on her hind legs, carefully holding her magnificent tail away from the dust and the cockleburrs. She may have believed in the re-incarnation theory, but it was evident that she did not care to become even a little burred. Upon her arm was an old Fox, with a scarred face, blind and helpless, as I soon perceived. He was bald in many places, had false teeth in both jaws, and his tail had only one new sprout at the end of it. He paid no attention whatever to me, and I quickly surmised that he had also lost the sense of hearing.

I knit my brows in deep thought, then instantly unravelled them. The express thundered around the bend, and, in a flash, I understood. He was some poor old foxy grandpa, totally deaf, whom Hoop-La had found walking upon the railroad track and was taking home. It gave me a new insight into her kind heart, and I was sure that if I could only make her understand how Uncle Antonio and I felt about Jocko, she would release him, even though the children wanted to play with him.

But to make her understand? Ah, measureless, impassable gulf that lies between us and our kindred of the wild!

Several days later I visited the den. I could hear Jocko flopping about on his chain in the far corner, and hear the little Foxes screaming with delight. I did not think Hoop-La was at home, and was about to crawl in and kidnap Jocko. Just then, as if reading my thought, she came out.

She looked at me disdainfully—contemptuously, I thought. Then she went back, returning almost immediately with an old, worn-out rubber, which she expressively dropped at my feet. I crept away in shame, fully understanding her point of view.

Eventually, the thing was solved, and in a strange manner. It came about in this way.

Uncle Antonio, like many foreign noblemen, carried with him a miniature cooking outfit and some imported ingredients. He had said nothing about these, being content to subsist entirely upon my humbler fare, but one day, when I was about to start for the village, he came to me.

“You goa da town?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Looka da here,” pleaded Uncle Antonio. “You bringa sixa da pork chop, two lar-rge can da tomat, one onion lika your head.”

“What for?” I asked, suspiciously.

Uncle Antonio’s face became radiant. “Hist!” he replied, in a stage whisper. “Me cooka da spaghett! Nica da spaghett!”

For the first time in my life, I felt deep and abiding love for my Uncle. Needless to say, I hastened back with the required articles.

In a kettle, over the fire, Uncle Antonio fried the pork chops and the onion to a deep seal brown, then added the contents of both cans of tomatoes. He salted the mixture liberally, then from his pack brought two large cloves of garlic and a bottle of paprika. He sliced the garlic in, sprinkled it with the paprika, and, by some means known only to himself, decreased the heat.

All day the appetising compound simmered. At night, Uncle Antonio pressed the entire mixture through a sieve that he had in his kit, and set it aside. Then he prepared a kettle of boiling water, with a tablespoonful of salt in it, and from the inside of his organ took out a great bundle of spaghetti, the tubes being very small, and something over a yard and a half long.

“Nica da spaghett,” crooned Uncle, stroking it fondly. “Maka da wonderful moosic!”

He boiled it twenty minutes by my jewelled repeater, drained it, put some on my plate, poured a liberal quantity of the sauce over it, and passed me a bottle of grated cheese, which, until now, he had kept in his hat.

I tasted of it with some misgivings, but instantly I was Uncle’s. Through my system vibrated a single joyous thought—I had watched him and I knew how to do it.

I must have eaten nearly a peck of it. There was some left, and when I went to bed I put it outside, for fear I should get up and eat it in the night.

In the morning I crept out, hungrily, thinking to steal a march upon Uncle, but, to my astonishment, the plate looked as if it had been washed, and all the sauce was gone!

I made a loud exclamation of pained surprise, and Uncle Antonio came out, fully dressed. He slept in his clothes to save time and trouble. “Oh,” he shrieked, tearing his hair, “eet ees Jocko! Jocko haf been here in ze night w’ile I sleep! Jocko lova da spaghett! He always washa da plate for me!”

He tore around like a madman, looking for his pet, but of course he found nothing. I saw something, but wisely held my tongue about it. A box of Hoop-La’s footprints had been left on the doorstep and there was a bundle of her tracks a little farther on in the wood.

Like Minerva from the head of Jove, a great scheme presented itself, all ready to be worked out. That afternoon, I climbed to my observatory, and with my powerful field-glass saw Hoop-La on the veranda of her home, grinning, licking her chops, and occasionally patting her stomach with an air of satisfaction.

That night I said to my esteemed relation: “Uncle Antonio, if you will fix up another pail of that spaghetti, borrow a Horse, and trust me implicitly, I think I can restore Jocko to your empty arms.”

He looked at me suspiciously, then assailed me with a torrent of questions, to all of which I made no reply. He spent the night preparing more sauce, and at dawn he set out for the nearest village, twenty-one and a half miles distant, to borrow a Horse.

About noon, he rode in, put up the Horse in the bridle chamber attached to the premises, and cooked a savoury mess of spaghetti. My mouth watered, but I dared not hesitate. I mounted, took the plate, and rode off toward Hoop-La’s den.

As I had hoped, she was at home. I tied the plunging steed, whose mouth was dripping and who regarded the spaghetti yearningly, and advanced to the front piazza.

Sniffing hungrily, she came out, and I heard the frenzied clankings of Jocko’s chain. “Come, Hoop-La,” I said, though my voice trembled. She called her children, and in a moment they were all eating greedily.

As I had planned, poor, imprisoned Jocko came out to the end of his chain. It did not permit him to go farther than a foot from the entrance, but that was sufficient for my purpose. Quick as a flash, I unfastened the chain from his collar, took the thoroughly frightened animal in my arms, and ran for dear life to the Horse.

I was none too soon. With an angry snarl, Hoop-La followed me, but she had already eaten too heartily to do her best work on the rough track which lay ahead of us. She clung to the Horse’s tail, growling and snarling in baffled rage, her claws and teeth urging the trembling steed into a foaming gallop.

My hat flew off and many of my most valuable ideas blew out through my ears, never to return, but Jocko, terrorised into death-like stillness, lay quietly inside my coat.

Somehow or other, I kept my seat, and thus we dashed into Uncle Antonio’s presence. When she saw the strange man, Hoop-La let go and slunk back into the woods, defeated and ashamed.

“Jocko!” screamed Uncle, in a passion of joy, as his long-lost pet flew into his arms. “Bambino! Cara mia!” Fine family feeling compels me to draw a veil over that affecting reunion.

Just at sunset, they left me, marching southward, Uncle’s blissful state of mind expressing itself in exultant strains from his organ. He read meanings into the music that the composer, in his wildest moments, could never have hoped to convey. It is a peculiarity of travelling musical geniuses, like my Uncle, that they always begin a journey at sunset, when the day goes.

Growing ever fainter, the compelling strains of triumph broke upon my listening ears, fortunately without doing any damage. Fortissimo, forte, decrescendo, piano, diminuendo, pianissimo, peace—thus the clear commanding notes died into silence, winding in a thread of silver melody around the base of the distant hill.

Night fell, but I dodged and it did not hit me. The quiet sweetness of the woods was like a plaster on a sore place, and I enjoyed it to the full. My conscience reproached me somewhat for betraying the trust the tawny mother had reposed in me, and I felt, intuitively, that I should never see her again.

I never did, though I am always expecting to meet her in the woods, and I never hear a faux pas without thinking it maybe Hoop-La or one of her children.