Immeasurably elated by his success in outwitting the Boy, Red Fox now ran some risk of growing overbold and underrating the superiority of man. Fortunately for himself, however, he presently received a sharp lesson. He was stealthily trailing Jabe Smith, one crisp morning, when the latter was out with his gun, looking for partridges. A whirr of unseen wings chancing to make Jabe turn sharply in his tracks, he caught sight of a bright red fox shrinking back into the underbrush. Jabe was a quick shot. He up with his gun and fired instantly. His charge, however, was only in for partridges, and the shot was a long one. A few of the small leaden pellets struck Red Fox in the flank. They penetrated no deeper than the skin; but the shock was daunting, and they stung most viciously. In his amazement and fright he sprang straight into the air. Then, straightening himself out, belly to earth, he fled off in a red streak among the trunks of the young white birches. For days he was tormented with a smarting and itching in his side, which nothing could allay; and for weeks he kept well away from the haunts of men.

About this time the young fox met with several surprises. One morning, emerging from under his juniper-bush in the first pale rose of dawn, he found a curious, thin, sparkling incrustation on the dead leaves, and the brown grasses felt stiff and brittle under his tread. Much puzzled, he sniffed at the hoarfrost, and tasted it, and found it had nothing to give tongue or nose but a sensation of cold. The air, too, had grown unwontedly cold, so that his thoughts reverted to the burrow which he had been digging. Both the cold and the sparkling hoarfrost fled away as the sun got high; but Red Fox set himself at once to work completing his burrow. Thereafter he occupied it, and forgot all about the lair beneath the juniper-bush.

Shortly after this he made his first acquaintance with the miracle of the ice. One chilly morning in the half-light, when the upper sky was just taking on the first rose-stains of dawn, he stopped to drink at a little pool. To his amazement, his muzzle came in contact with some hard but invisible substance, intervening between his nose and the water. At first he backed off in wary suspicion, and glanced all about him to see if anything else had gone wrong in the world. Then he sniffed at the ice, and lapped it tentatively; and finally, growing bolder, thrust at it so hard with his nose that it broke. This seemed to solve the mystery to his satisfaction, so he slaked his thirst and went about his hunting. Later in the day, however, happening to drink again at the same pool, he was surprised to find that the strange, hard, invisible, breakable substance had all gone. He hunted for it anxiously, and was utterly mystified until he found some remnants still unthawed; whereupon he was once more content, seeming to think the phenomenon quite adequately explained.

This surprise over hoarfrost and ice, however, was nothing to his troubled astonishment on the coming of the first snow. One morning, after a hard hunting expedition which had occupied the first half of the night, he slept till after daylight. During his sleep the snow had come, covering the ground to the depth of about an inch. When he poked his nose out from the burrow, the flurry was about over, but here and there a light, belated flake still loitered down.

At his first sight of a world from which all colour had been suddenly wiped out, Red Fox started back—shrank back, indeed, to the very bottom of his den. The universal and inexplicable whiteness appalled him. In a moment or two, however, curiosity restored his courage, and he returned to the door. But he would not venture forth. Cautiously thrusting his head out, he stared in every direction. What was this white stuff covering everything but the naked hardwood branches? It looked to him like feathers. If so, there must have been great hunting. But no, his nose soon informed him it was not feathers. Presently he took up a little in his mouth, and was puzzled to find that it vanished almost instantly. At last he stepped out, to investigate the more fully. But, to his disgust, he found that he got his feet wet, as well as cold. He hated getting his feet wet, so he slipped back at once into the den and licked them dry.

For an hour or more Red Fox sulked and marvelled in his dry retreat. Then as the air grew soft the snow dissolved away in patches, and he came out, stepping fastidiously. But all through the morning he was too much interested to do any hunting. Not till late afternoon did hunger make him forget this inexplicable thing that had so changed the face of his world, and drive him forth to the serious business of life. When, however, some ten days later, on the heels of an iron frost, the snow came in earnest, he had completely adapted himself to it and treated storm and cold alike with supreme unconcern.

In all this time Red Fox had had not a glimpse of his mother or sister, though their trails he had crossed from time to time, recognizing them unerringly by the scent. At these reminiscent trails he always sniffed with a kind of pleasure, yet he felt no impulse to follow them up and renew old intimacies. Other foxes, strangers, he caught sight of in the distance once in awhile; but his impulse, like that of his kind, was to avoid companionship, which is apt to mean complication. Moreover, he had no wish to encourage trespassers upon what he now regarded as his own peculiar range. Young as he was, he was nevertheless so vigorous and well grown as to pass readily for a fine yearling; and he was quite prepared to fight in defence of his preËmptions.

This freedom from interference could hardly be expected to last, however, without some price being exacted. Red Fox had a possession which many of the wild creatures coveted—to wit, a burrow that was secret, dry, and warm. In his absences it had been explored by various stealthy wanderers,—weasel, woodchuck, mink, and black snake,—but they had all taken care to be well out of it before the owner’s return. One surly old woodchuck, a battle-scarred veteran of a courage to match his ill-temper, went so far as to establish himself in the door of the burrow with the purpose of fighting for its possession. But Red Fox happened to be away on a long chase in the other valley; and, after the old woodchuck had waited for a couple of hours in vain, his valour waned. He remembered that there were other burrows, if not to be stolen then to be dug; and he remembered, too, that the issues of war are doubtful. He wandered down to the nearest turnip-field, was caught in his pillaging by the black and white mongrel, and killed after a magnificent fight. And Red Fox never guessed what a stern struggle had been spared him. Strong and clever as he was, he doubtless would have won; but he would have carried scars thereafter.