The Story Of Redpad The Fox

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Title:     The Story Of Redpad The Fox
Author: M. D. Haviland [More Titles by Haviland]

CHAPTER I

THE SPRING RAINS

Vix found the old drain at the beginning of March. It was warm and roomy, and ran under the gate of the Plantation Field. Once upon a time, before the reservoir was built further up the hill, the stream which rose under St. Bridget's Tower had emptied itself through this drain into the bog; but that was many years ago, and now the moss and ferns grew thickly round the opening, and the grating at the further end was choked with rubbish. Nevertheless, because it was dry and lonely it suited Vix exactly, and the four cubs were born there towards the end of the month. They were blind, red, squealing creatures who groped and fought in the hot darkness to reach Vix and nuzzle at her side, and at first she spent most of the twenty-four hours among them; but as they grew bigger and needed more food she was forced to spend much time on hunting excursions. Fortunately, however, as rabbits were to be had for the picking up in Knockdane Woods over the hill, and mice and rats were plentiful in the bog, the neighbouring poultry yards were not too severely taxed and Vix's nursery remained undiscovered.

April was ushered in by a cool dark evening after heavy rain. The sunset was pale and stormy, blotted out by ragged clouds, and as Vix trotted home she heard the 'rail' singing up the river. The 'rail' is the name which the Fur Folk have given to the sound which is heard at night before a storm, and it is one of the most mysterious noises of the whole countryside. There may be no wind stirring at the time, but the Wild Folk hear the strange whining far away over the woods and bogs, and know that there is a gale blowing up from the sea.

Vix's path lay by the reservoir, and here, startled perhaps by some night noise among the rushes, she paused. The reservoir had been built many years ago when Paddy Magragh's father had plenty of money, and much stock which required water. He caught the little brook which trickled through Vix's drain from St. Bridget's Tower to the bog, and turned its course into the big cement basin, leading off the water by a sluice into a new channel. But the farm had fallen on evil days at the hands of Paddy Magragh, and the reservoir was choked with cresses and duckweed. Much rain had fallen this spring, and the basin was dangerously full. The sluice was shut fast, but the brown water squirted through the chinks and danced down the hill. The stream, all wild with joy of the great rains, brought down leaves and twigs in its rush, and waltzed them round and round in the plaited current until it heaped them against the ever-growing scum and débris at the sluice. By and by the branch of a tree came rolling along, and stuck fast. The leaves were driven against it until a high barricade was raised, and the water could only trickle through the sluice. Then Vix went home to her cubs, but the stream still poured into the basin from which it could find no outlet. There was only one flaw in the cement, and that quite a little one, patched with clay and willow withies, but the water--the brown, treacherous water--found it out, and worked silently and steadily all night. O a mad, merry miner is the water!

Hard after the 'rail' came the wind and the rain. Safe and warm below ground, the foxes heard the howling of the gale in the Plantation, and the steady splash of rain drops on the sodden ground; but the brick walls of the drain were still strong and water-tight. Paddy Magragh in his cabin also heard the storm roaring outside, and remembered that he had left the sluice of the reservoir closed; but he dismissed the thought with a characteristic 'time enough to-morrow.'

Vix was astir at daybreak the next morning. The wind still moaned in fitful gusts and brief rain-storms drove across the sky. There was a watery gleam in the east which told of the sunrise to be, and the fields were flooded. Vix reached the reservoir. It was full of turbid water which lipped to the very brim, and the clay which dammed up the broken wall was sodden and dripping.

As Vix watched, a strange thing happened. A lump crumbled outwards and a ripple of water ran down the slope towards the fence. It swelled a little as the hole grew larger, until it became quite a broad stream. It sang a merry little song to itself as it ran--so merry that a number of brother ripples hastened to join it. They crowded into the hole in such numbers, struggling to pass through, that suddenly the whole earthwork tottered and crumbled away, and the coffee-coloured flood leaped through the gap down the hill in the wake of the first ripple. Brawling, tumbling, spreading into shallow pools and splashing cascades, it raced down the field. The hedge barred its way for a moment, but urged by the rush behind, it rose, and crept between the hawthorns into the ditch on the further side. It was many a year since the stream had found its way down that ditch. It poured into its old bed joyously, and kissed the primroses with foam kisses before it drowned them in its cold ripples.

Not until the flood had entered the Plantation Field did Vix realise what it meant. Then she ran, faster than when the hounds were at her brush, straight to the drain where her four ruddy cubs lay in the torrent's path. The stream was perilously near them. It had carved a way for itself among the grass and brambles which choked the ditch, and sang to itself lustily on the way to the bog. Vix dashed underground, and, seizing the first of the warm whining creatures which she stumbled over in the darkness, she turned to fly. Too late! She was caught in a trap. The water burst into the drain, and surging to and fro to find an exit, it filled the tunnel to the roof. Vix, half drowned but still clinging to the cub, was battered to and fro. Something which was not driftwood was driven against her in the darkness; but though her mother-love was great she could not hold two, and it slipped past her. Twice she fought her head above water, and twice she was washed off her feet. The third time, gasping and choking, she gained the opening, struggled to land, and laid the dripping cub on the bank. But there were three more down there. Vix looked at the flood which plunged through the drain and into the field through the further opening, and that good instinct which bids the Wild Folk care first for that which is nearest conquered. She picked up the half-drowned cub, and galloped up the hill towards Knockdane.

When, three hours later, Paddy Magragh strolled by, the flood had subsided, and only a trickle filtered through the drain, which was half choked with rubbish. On the bank lay three little red bodies, and there were marks on the wet earth where strong frenzied pads had striven to dig down to the treasures hidden below.

That was all that Paddy Magragh ever knew, but that spring an old fox cared for her one remaining cub in the woods of Knockdane. And that cub was Redpad.

 

CHAPTER II

THE HUNTERS

So this was the coming of Redpad to Knockdane. A whole book might be written about his early adventures, but as this is to be his history, I must pass them by to speak of those things which befell him as he grew older. It is sufficient to say that he entered on his career in the woods with two important assets--a good nose and a good mother; and these two will carry one of the Fur Folk far.

Vix kept her cub in an old rabbit burrow until he was old enough to hunt for himself. The first blood which Redpad ever drew was, strange to say, his own. One May evening he was playing by the mouth of the hole, when all at once a rustle in a bluebell bed attracted him. His instinct, which until now had lain dormant, awoke. He bunched his woolly legs together and bared his little milk teeth. The flower bells waved to and fro again--and Redpad cleared the intervening space with one bound, to land, pads extended, upon a sulky hedgehog. He crept whimpering back to his mother to lick his sore toes and meditate on one of the oldest saws of the Fox Folk, which runs: 'Never spring until your nose confirms your eyes and ears.'

The woods are at their loveliest in May, when the chestnut leaves spread out their cool fingers, and a filmy green veil of foliage is flung over the beeches' naked branches. In the long light evenings scores of rabbits grazed along the woodsides, and it was upon these that Redpad took his first lessons in hunting. He obeyed Vix and her signals implicitly, and therefore learned by imitation, which is the only form of pedagogy known in the woods.

One evening when the sun shot long slanting shadows across Knockdane, the foxes stole out to hunt. Between the woods and the river lies a flat meadow, and thither Vix led Redpad, the latter aping the carriage of his mother's brush to the best of his ability. She made him crouch down in the thicket twenty yards from the fence, but she herself crept forward. Although the bushes were too thick to allow her to see into the field, yet the air was full of that peculiar silence which means that many hearts are beating and many ears listening close at hand. But the senses of a fox are very keen, and above the murmur of the river over its pebbles, Vix could hear eager lips snatching and nibbling at the coarse grass, and many feet splashing in the dew. She crept forward until she could peep into the field, and saw a dozen rabbits feeding there. A fox has two methods of completing a 'stalk'--the spring and the rush. Vix preferred to spring Thug-like upon her victim, but in this case the prey was too far away, and she resolved to rush it. Cramping her limbs together she dashed through the fence and leaped at the bunny she had marked. She might as well have pursued a shadow. A dozen pairs of feet stamped a warning, and a dozen scuts scuttled into the bushes. There was a twang as some reckless rabbit stubbed his nose against the wire, and then the patter of feet darting in every direction.

Had Vix been hunting alone that evening she would have gone supperless, but as it happened, one rabbit chose that runway where Redpad crouched. It saw its danger too late and swerved--but the cub darted forward and rolled it over, almost turning a somersault in the vehemence of his rush. Vix came leaping through the bushes and tugged the kill away from him. He yielded it growling, but ultimately was permitted to demolish by far the largest share.

By such expeditions Vix taught her cub to know every lane, bank, and 'shore'[1] in the country round Knockdane, and this knowledge was very useful to him when later on he was obliged to hunt and be hunted by himself. Besides the rabbits, there were rats and mice to be had. Vix took Redpad down to Kilree Bog, where there are deep ditches choked with furze and bramble, and banks tunnelled through by burrows. Sometimes they went rat hunting by Paddy Magragh's farmstead at moonrise; but this was dangerous country, for in the yard dwelt a certain long-legged yellow dog with a keen nose and ready tongue.

[1] Shore = A covered drain.

September came, and in the fine warm weather the foxes spent most of their time above ground. Golden ragweed blazed in all the fields, and the swallows began to assemble for their journey south. Yellow sprays appeared among the dark leaves of the beeches, and Redpad attained proportions more in keeping with the size of his head. His white tagged brush was his great pride, his coat was shining with health, and he was remarkable for his forepads, which were many shades lighter than those of his mother; in fact, they were not black at all, but deep bay--hence his name. Not until he was full grown did his mother teach him how to hunt that swiftest and wariest of game--the hare. The stoat and the cat claim equal rights with the fox over rabbit, squirrel, and rat, but only the fox is strong enough to pull down the grown hare.

One hot dark night the foxes awoke just before moonrise. Vix stretched herself and whined, and Redpad raised his muzzle, which was curled round into his brush. The burrow was pitch dark, but he felt his mother glide past him, and he rose and followed her. Outside they paused and sniffed the west wind appreciatively--the scent was good.

Vix turned down the hill, picking her way daintily through the fern and brambles, and Redpad followed. Fox language must consist of signs of the ears and whiskers, for it is noiseless. Nevertheless she conveyed to him whither they were bound. They trotted through Knockdane, scaled the high boundary wall, and gained the open country, which lay placid under the twilight of moonrise.

They hunted far afield that night. Two hours before daybreak they crossed the Killeen road and came to a wide brook. The moon was high in the sky, and every tree and bulrush on the bank was plainly visible. The sleepy cattle, chewing the cud under a willow, heaved themselves up with a grunt and herded together as the foxes loped past. They trotted up-wind in silence some hundred yards apart, ears alert to catch the least sound, brushes drooping. Then Vix suddenly put down her nose and broke into a canter, and as Redpad galloped after her, the warm wind bore the scent of hare to his nostrils.

The meadows were dotted with tall thistles and ragweed, so that, running close to the ground, the foxes could not see far ahead, but one of the axioms of the Wild Folk is: hunt with your nose, kill with your teeth, and let your eyes take care of themselves. The scent led them across the road into a bog. Here Redpad, who led the chase, lost the trail at the edge of a dyke and was thrown out, but Vix leaped over and picked it up on the other side. They crossed the bog at full speed, scaring a silent heron, who was fishing knee-deep in a pool, almost out of his wits. On the other side the trail led over a furze-clad hill, and here there were many other scents--fox, rabbit, badger and other hares--and the foxes separated. But Redpad, hunting to and fro like a beagle, worked out the line into the grass-lands again, and they crossed some stubbles where the sheep rushed together into a jostling stamping flock at their approach.

Hitherto the hare had kept her lead well, but now before dawn the scent clung persistently to the dewy grass, and the hunters began to gain ground. The chase bent round towards Knockdane once more, but the trail curved and twisted in turnings as intricate as those of a swallow. The 'false dawn' appeared over the mountains, and the air grew cooler. The foxes' tongues were out, and their flanks heaved, but they pressed on as keenly as ever, as first one and then the other picked up the failing scent.

Several times the hare had doubled back a short way and then leaped aside to baffle her pursuers; but Vix was cunning, and by casting to right or left, never failed to nose out the line.

At last they came to a field not very far from their starting point, and here they checked at fault. Redpad turned to the right, but Vix snuffled her way down the loosely built stone wall which bounded the field. Suddenly a hare leaped up almost under her feet, and hurled itself at the wall. It clung to the top for an instant and then, slowly stiffening, dropped back into Vix's jaws. The chase was over.

Redpad galloped back across the field, his coat wet with dew and his tongue flopping out. Vix was already crouched over her kill. At his approach she glanced at him suspiciously, and for the first time in his life she growled at him--not the low lazy growl of an old vixen to her riotous cub, but the deep menacing rumble of one grown fox to another. For this, Redpad's first long chase and kill, was, so to speak, the day of his coming of age. Vix's instinct told her that the change had come. He was no longer the red, woolly cub who had tugged at her side, but a full-grown fox able to fend for himself, and also able to snatch the kill from her had he so chosen. Hence she snarled at him; and it was another proof that Redpad had passed the days of cubhood that he did not fly at her throat, as he assuredly would have done had any other fox used him so, but only hovered near to devour such morsels as she rejected. For it is one of the laws of the Fox Folk that a he-fox shall never attack a vixen to snatch her kill from her. It is a wise and good law, as are all those which are observed in the woods.

When Vix had eaten her fill she rose and quenched her great thirst in a stream. But only a little remained for Redpad, and his hunger was scarcely appeased when they trotted back to Knockdane on the hill in the grey dawn.

 

CHAPTER III

FIRST BLOOD

Vix lay under a bush with her brush curled round her nose and eyes. Only her ears, ever wakeful and alert, kept watch while she slept. It was six o'clock, and a still misty morning with a heavy dew over everything. Close by lay Redpad with his nose on his pads; but he slept more lightly than Vix, for he had eaten less than she had done after their hunting. Thus he was the first to wake at the sound of a yelp in the valley. He sat up with a whimper and looked at his mother. He expected her to leap up, but she only stretched out her forelegs lazily and closed her eyes again. Perhaps her heavy meal at dawn had blunted the senses which as a rule gave her such timely warning of danger. Redpad could neither see nor smell anything suspicious, but those noises had convinced him that all was not right. He cast a last look at Vix, and then trotted away among the bushes.

Presently he met an old badger plodding along. The badger was glancing back every now and then at the sound of a 'yow-yow-yow' in the valley; and by and by a hare scudded past in a panic. All the while the clamour was drawing nearer, and was interspersed with whip-cracking and shouts. It all sounded very loud and alarming to Redpad, who was accustomed to the stillness of the woods, and he decided to move on. He was cantering along a ride when suddenly, on turning a corner, he came full upon a horseman. The man stared at Redpad, and Redpad stared at the man for a few seconds, and then the former leaped into the bushes; but as he fled he heard a view-halloa behind him.

He galloped through thickets and crashed through briars, and as he ran he heard the pack give tongue on his line. Up till now he had not realised that the presence of the strangers in the wood boded anything evil to the Foxkind, but had simply avoided them because they were new to him and noisy. At last it dawned on him that he was pursued, and he experienced all the fears of the hunted. In his extremity he ran back to the thicket where he had slept, to seek his cunning mother's help. Several times he was obliged to go out of his way to evade hounds who were hunting up and down the wood; for it was the first time that many of the puppies had been out, and the experience had proved too much for their wits. Some four couple were unpleasantly close to Redpad's brush as he entered the thicket, but he dodged them, and ran straight to his mother's lair. It was still warm, but empty. Redpad made up his mind quickly. To his right the wood was less thick. Here and there grew an isolated oak or pine, and the hillside was covered with rocks and fern. A little way off there was a crag some forty feet high at whose foot rose a little stream. Redpad pattered up this to its source; and about six feet from the ground, half hidden by polypody ferns, found a cleft in the limestone. A rush and a scramble carried him into this retreat, which was just large enough to contain him; and the ferns had scarcely ceased to wave before the hounds broke out of the covert.

Redpad watched the huntsman put them into the patch of bracken. One worked one way, and one another, but they had no leader, for the old hounds were mostly down in the valley. And the longer they lingered, the staler grew the scent.

Suddenly a lemon-and-white hound on the bank of the stream lifted up his voice and announced that a fox had passed that way, and the rest rushed after him. Two men rode behind the hounds, and one said to the other, pointing out the pale one who had picked up the scent:

'That's a grand houn' in the makin'.'

'Ay,' said the other, 'an' he's as swate on a stale line as ever auld Pirate was before him. Hike! Hike to Ravager!'

The hounds hunted almost up to the crag, but the morning air was merciful, and drew the scent above their heads. However, the yellow puppy was not to be baulked. There was a narrow ledge which ran obliquely from the ground to the cleft where Redpad lay hidden, and up this he climbed. Redpad was watching the rest of the pack from between the fern fronds, when a joyous bay above his head proclaimed that he was discovered.

Redpad leaped from his hiding-place and darted away with the leading hound not a dozen yards from his brush. There was no time to turn or try any tricks--he ran for his life. He led his pursuers right across Knockdane, but it seemed as though there was a galloping horse in every path and ride, and a hound in every brake. In his extremity he turned to the moor. He raced up the steep hillside through clumps of solemn fir trees, where the tits twittered as though there were no such thing as man, and through beds of ivy and fern.

At last the long slope of the Big Meadow lay before him, and he gathered all his remaining strength for the dash over this danger zone. By the hedge stood a horse and rider who halloaed as he passed, but to fox ideas a man was far less dangerous than the hounds behind, and he took no notice. He galloped across the field and entered the clump of trees in the middle. Suddenly another fox leaped up and went away in front of him. It was Vix. She knew well who were following their line, and cantered at her top speed; but she was still heavy and drowsy after her full meal at dawn, and presently Redpad, tired as he was, overtook and passed her.

The pack was very close behind as they entered the narrow belt of woodland at the top of the field; but the hounds were all alone, for the thick hedge had stopped the horses at the bottom of the hill, and they had been obliged to go a long way round. Redpad's tongue was out, for he had run far through the wood that morning, and, besides, he was very frightened. Just in front of him loomed the high demesne wall. Redpad had leaped upon it, when he suddenly noticed a thick bush of ivy which overhung the coping to his right, and instead of leaping down the other side he crept into the ivy and lay there panting.

A second later Vix came up. Twice she leaped and twice she fell back, but the third time she gained the coping just as the hounds came up. They crowded over the wall on the scent, Ravager leading, and poured down the hill on the other side after the little red figure half a field's length in front. They were so close to him that one spring would have landed Redpad in their midst, but he lay like a stone, and they passed him by.

'Head them off if ye can, Mike,' yelled the huntsman, galloping up. ''Tis an auld fox!'

'It was not, then! Didn't I see him cross the path below, an' he a cub?'

'Don't stand there arguin', ye fool! Nip round to the gate above, for she's bet, an' we've none too many in this country.'

They galloped away, and the 'yowl-yowl' of the pack died away over the moor.

* * * * *

Redpad lay among the ivy until the morning mists cleared away; and the croon of the woodpigeons was the only sound which broke the stillness. Then he leaped from his sanctuary and crept down the hill. He sought for his mother high and low, through thickets and rocks, but he could not find her; and when the autumn moon rose he wandered to and fro and yelped for her, but she never came back again to Knockdane.

Nevertheless woodland grief is as short-lived as it is poignant, and before September had given place to October, Redpad hunted in Knockdane and robbed the Ballygallon hen-roosts contentedly alone.

 

CHAPTER IV

HOW THE DEBT WAS PAID

All the following winter Redpad hunted in Knockdane. Several times the hounds came and he had to run for his brush, but it takes a great deal to catch a hardy Irish fox who is sound in wind and limb. When summer came he picked up plenty of young rabbits and grew fat. Paddy Magragh learned to recognise him, and designated him 'the big red felly.' Although he had been deprived of his mother so early, yet he learned by experience and instinct, those best of teachers, how to overcome or circumvent the wiliest of the wood creatures for his own ends. He established himself in the upper gallery of a badger's 'set.' The badger had cleaned it out for his own winter use, but Redpad discovered it one day, and adopted it. The badger was seriously annoyed and endeavoured to oust the intruder by every means in his power, but Redpad went on the principle of bowing to the storm. When the badger offered to fight him he discreetly sought quarters elsewhere; but no sooner had the rightful owner triumphantly freed the burrow from the hated taint of fox, than he returned. At last the badger grew weary of the contest. He took up his residence at the bottom of the earth, and left Redpad in undisputed possession of the upper gallery.

Winter came round for the second time, and by now Redpad had come to his full strength. Knockdane seldom sees hard frost or snow, but as a rule the south wind blows up a warm mist, and a steady rain drips through the leafless trees.

In December rabbit-traps were set in Knockdane, and Redpad was not long in finding them out. It was against regulations to set traps in the open, but Paddy Magragh, who was in charge of the trapping, was not particular; and Redpad's first introduction to a rabbit-trap was the snap of steel jaws on his toe. He wrenched himself free, but he walked lame for many a day afterwards, and he had learned his lesson. He soon found out that the trapper made his morning and evening rounds with fair regularity, and he arranged that his own excursions should be made accordingly. He trotted round the traps just in front of Magragh, and when the latter arrived, more than half of them contained nothing but a severed rabbit's head. This happened two or three times, and then Magragh, who knew nearly as much about wood ways as Redpad himself, reversed the order in which he visited the traps, and presently caught the thief red-handed.

'Every dog has his day, me fine lad,' muttered Magragh, hurling a fir cone after the white-tagged brush; 'but I'm thinking the hounds will have theirs before so long.'

After that Magragh lifted his traps to the other side of Knockdane, for which Redpad had no great liking, as there were more farmsteads in the neighbourhood, and consequently more cur dogs.

During the fine weather about Christmas time Redpad left the main woods, and hunted and slept in the thick hedgerows by the river below Knockdane. They were full of rats and rabbits, but were not a very safe resort, for it is one of the Sabbath amusements of the youth of those parts to go out with dogs, and hunt any outlying fox in the hedges. Redpad could outrun any dog in the country, but his slender limbs were no match for the more sturdily built terriers and sheep-dogs at close grips, so perhaps it was just as well that a cold snap drove him back to the woods again.

While the frost was on the ground Redpad was hungry and robbed hen-roosts recklessly. One night twelve hens roosted in an outhouse with a defective latch at John Skehan's farm. The next morning when the owner went his rounds, three corpses lay on the floor, and the rest of the fowls had disappeared; all but one broody biddy under a basket.

'Ye may go afther the rest, ye divil,' said John Skehan to this survivor bitterly, and dismissed her with a kick. His words were fulfilled more literally than he expected. She alighted cackling beyond the farmyard wall--a red shadow sprang up silently, and John Skehan had a glimpse of a white-tagged brush heading towards Knockdane along a path strewn with feathers. This was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Skehan set his dog after the thief. At first the dog gained on Redpad, who was weighted with the fowl, but presently the fox dropped his burden, and John Skehan chuckled at the thought that the robber would not profit by his raid. But Redpad increased his lead again, and then picked up another hen from behind a hedge. This happened twice, and every time he had to leave his booty to escape from his pursuer; but the third time he succeeded in carrying it in triumph to Knockdane. Afterwards it was found that those hens which he could not carry away he had deposited in caches along the path between Knockdane and the farm, in order to remove them at his leisure.

This misdeed hurried on the day of reckoning. John Skehan laid the tattered remains of his poultry before the proper authorities, and in consequence one day early in the year the hounds came to Knockdane. The best hound in the dog-pack that season was that Ravager who had been blooded on the morning when Vix had been hunted down, more than a year before. Redpad had met Ravager once before that winter, and had been obliged to resort to every trick he knew in order to circumvent that sagacious leader of the pack.

Of course Redpad found the 'earth' stopped when he returned home at daybreak, and he accordingly sought out a hiding-place which had already baffled his enemies several times. There was an ivy-grown fir tree which the wind had partially uprooted and flung against its fellows. It was quite easily climbed, and Redpad curled himself up in the ivy about fifteen feet from the ground. Here he slept very comfortably until noon, and then the familiar 'yowl-yowl' awakened him. For an hour or more he watched the hounds as they occasionally galloped past; and at last two men in pink coats rode along and halted under the very tree where he lay hidden. Presently a squirrel, passing through a neighbouring tree, looked down and caught sight of a fox sitting like an owl in an ivy bush. Nothing upsets a squirrel so much as curiosity, and a fox in a fir tree was something quite outside the experience of this particular one. He instantly desired to know a hundred things as to the why and wherefore of this strange occurrence, and in short was transformed into one tense note of interrogation.

He chattered tentatively--the fox did not move. Then he chattered defiantly, but still there was no sign. He hopped near and dared the fox to chase him, but Redpad knew better than to stir. Then the squirrel grew almost beside himself with passion. He kicked the branch on which he sat, he scolded until the woods rang, he jibbered with rage. Three jays came up to see what the fuss was about, and added their voices to the commotion. At last it grew so loud that even the dull human ears of the men under the tree remarked that something unusual was going on. They looked up--saw something red stir in the ivy and--'By Jove!' said the younger; and his halloa sent the squirrel leaping away.

Five minutes later a council was held under the tree.

'Who will climb up and fetch him?' asked the master; but the 'boys' standing round only grinned and shook their heads.

Then old Paddy Magragh, who loved the foxes of Knockdane for the sake of the sport which the foxes begot, said: 'An' if I fetch him down to yez, will yer anner see that he has fair play and a good start?'

'Yes,' said the master; 'you shall turn him down yourself.'

So Paddy began to ascend the tree with a sack in one hand and his coat wrapped round the other. When he was about half-way up the tree he came face to face with Redpad, and the fox looked up with a snarl, but he could retreat no further up the trunk. Magragh crept closer and held out his coat. Quick as lightning Redpad buried his double row of ivory fangs in it. But it was too thick for them to reach the hand inside, and Magragh, seizing him by the back of the neck, tumbled him into the sack.

Redpad was let loose in the middle of the Big Meadow. When the sack-mouth was opened, he went away like an arrow without a glance behind.

'Good luck to yez,' said Paddy Magragh, 'for, begob, 'tis a great hunt ye'll give them to-day.'

It is a true saying that a bagged fox will not run far, but this was not so with Redpad, for he knew every inch of the country, and besides, he had not been long enough in the sack to grow cramped. He flew over the short grass, and as he cleared the demesne wall he heard the pack open behind him. To the south lay Carricktriss with its rocks and heather blue in the distance; down in the plain there was Sutcliffe's Gorse, surrounded by wet fields where the horses would sink fetlock deep at every step, and hedges impenetrable to anything but a blackbird. However, Redpad had made up his mind where he was going, and set his mask resolutely towards the east. Four miles of meadow-land lie between Knockdane and Kiltorkan Hill, but Redpad had a map of the country in his head, and he knew that no covert in the country was a surer refuge for a hunted fox. He slipped across a grass field where a couple of hobbled goats bucketted away at his approach; and, taking just the same line which Vix, his mother, had chosen for her last race for life eighteen months before, he galloped over the bog.

Most of the fences were wide-topped banks with a 'grip'[2] on the further side, and Redpad took them with an easy spring on and off. He was running with a good lead over a marshy field when he met with his first check at the highroad. A train of 'side cars,' 'ass cars,' and pedestrians, nearly a quarter of a mile long, were slowly proceeding to a funeral at Ballycarnew. Redpad could not cross the road under their feet, and was obliged to make a long detour which brought the hounds considerably nearer his brush--so much nearer indeed that presently he ascended a little knoll covered with furze to see if a certain drain was open. Although he did not know it, Vix in her extremity had also tried to reach this hiding-place, and she too had found it blocked. But Vix had been too exhausted to run any further and had turned to face the hounds in the field beyond, whereas Redpad was still fresh and with strength to spare.

[2] Ditch.

He looked back at the pack working out his line in the fields below him, and saw that Ravager was at their head. The horsemen had been stopped by a wire fence, and were following far behind. For the first time Redpad felt a little anxious. The scent was evidently good that day, and Kiltorkan was still more than two miles ahead. He quickened his pace and tried the old old trick of running through a herd of cattle in order to foul the line. This checked the hounds for a moment, but Ravager cast forward, and presently they came on faster than ever.

Redpad was still running strongly, but his tongue was out and he was coated with mud. He skirted two or three farmsteads, forded a brook where he paused to gulp a mouthful of water, and then climbed a long gradual slope. At the top he paused and looked back. He saw that Ravager with two couple of the best hounds was working some fifty yards ahead of the rest of the pack, and that some distance in the rear rode a man in pink. Kiltorkan was about half a mile away, but at its base ran a thin shining line of railroad. The Fur Folk of Kiltorkan care little for the noisy, fussy train which pants down to Waterford twice a day. They have found out long ago that it is only formidable in its own place, and is hedged in in some mysterious way by the wire fence on either side of the embankment.

Whether Redpad had any preconceived plan in his head as he raced to the railway I cannot say, but as soon as he climbed the bank on to the metals he heard a low roar, and round the distant curve the mail train swung into view. The hounds were now very close behind, for the pace for the last half-mile had been terrific. A cunning scheme came into Redpad's brain. He raced madly up the track towards the oncoming train. Belching forth smoke, and shaking the ground with the thunder of its rushing wheels, it had fewer terrors for him than the hunters behind. It was a hundred yards off--fifty--thirty--Redpad leaped aside and let the roaring monster hurtle past him, but the hounds, running blindly on the hot scent, never saw the danger. As Redpad leaped down the embankment the engine-driver saw what would occur and jammed the brakes to the groaning wheels, but it was too late. There was one yell, which rose above the clatter of the train, and then all was over.

Redpad struggled up the hill with his heart thudding against his ribs. At the summit there was a cairn of stones strong enough to defy pick and spade. Before slipping inside he looked back. The remainder of the pack were huddled together in the field below the railway. The train was at a standstill, and a group of men stood on the track looking at something lemon-and-white which lay without moving at their feet.

Redpad knew that he had nothing more to fear that day. If he had been a philosopher he might have reflected upon the saw that 'every dog has his day'; but as he was only a fox he crept into Kiltorkan Cairn to pant and bite thorns out of his pads.

 

CHAPTER V

THE SHEEP SLAYER

The temptation came late in February, for that is famine time in the country-side. The rabbits were alert, and it was difficult to stalk birds successfully when the leaves were off the trees. In three days Redpad had only picked up a starved rat and a sick pigeon, all skin and bone, and on the fourth day he caught nothing at all. His sides had fallen in, and his haunch bones stood out. At last he went to the moor; but although he hunted there for a long while, he did not even see a field-mouse. The sun had set when he returned to Knockdane, and the stars came out, one by one, in the steely sky. It was going to freeze. Redpad jumped a wall into a little field, where withered fern grew more plentifully than grass, and across which the sheep stampeded. These were the ewes with young lambs, and they wheeled into a jostling flock at his approach. Redpad never looked at them as he skirted the field. He was well used to sheep, but so far, in his opinion, their only use was to foul his line for the hounds. Also, even had he been so minded, he could scarcely pull down a lamb under the hoofs of the dams, for collectively the old ewes were formidable. Therefore he did not give them a second thought until he came to the far side of the field, when a little cry in the fern made him pause with pad upraised. He snuffed his way cautiously under the wall; and there, sheltered by a boulder from the cold wind, lay a newly dropped lamb. It was one of a couple, but being sickly, it had not risen and followed the dam to the rest of the flock as its fellow did. It was too weak to stand, and could only lie and shiver as the fox crept up. Redpad was ravenous--starving, in fact--and far and near the countryside was empty in the night. The old ewe was not at hand; nothing watched him but the hungry stars overhead. He seized the lamb by the shoulder, and it did not even bleat as he swung it over the wall, and cantered with it to Knockdane. That night, for the first time for many days, Redpad was full-fed, and slept soundly.

The theft might have remained undiscovered, but unluckily the sheep belonged to Jack Skehan; and twice a day, during the lambing time, he went along a certain path in Knockdane to visit the flock. The next morning, when on his usual round, his dog ran on ahead, and presently returned carrying the woolly leg of a lamb. On the path were unmistakable traces of Redpad's last night's meal; and worst of all, in the soft earth where he had drunk from a puddle, were the plain prints of pads. There was no doubt who had done the deed.

Jack Skehan himself was not kindly disposed to the Hunt, and he threw out dark hints as to his future plans. However, he had no opportunity of carrying these into effect, for Redpad did not visit the sheep again after his one theft. What with one thing and another, his luck began to turn. He picked up two or three snared rabbits and other trifles, and the press of famine was over for a time.

However, a week later, he was patrolling the fir wood at the top of Knockdane. It was a still night, mild for the season, with a crescent moon struggling behind a mass of little sheep-backed clouds. Presently he heard a businesslike patter of feet on the fir needles, and snuffing, that his nose might confirm his ears in correct fox fashion, he winded a dog. Redpad hated dogs only one degree less than men, and slipped quietly away into the shadows. The footsteps paused undecidedly at the spot where he had turned aside, then passed on.

Shortly afterwards, Redpad was scaling the demesne wall, when a distant rumble of hoofs startled him. The ground slopes away gently from the end of the wood, over the fields, and then rises again to meet the moor. Hence, from the wall, Redpad could look down into the field where the sheep dwelt. He saw the whole flock--a grey mass in the twilight--collected in a corner; and listening, it seemed to him that he heard a shrill yelp. However, it was not repeated, and as he winded nothing unusual, for the night air was damp and chilled the scent, he continued his way. Night after night he went to the moor by the same path--over the wall, and across the little field where the sheep grazed among the stones. Here he suddenly crossed a line from which the Fur Folk usually turn--the line of fresh blood; and among the dwarfed gorse he found the body of a young lamb. At that moment the sheep stampeded, and one lamb, breaking from the flock, bounded hither and thither among the rocks with the agility of despair. As it leaped, something small and dark sprang beside it. There was a wicked snarl, a piteous stifled bleat, and the lamb was dragged headlong into the furze. Redpad waited no longer, but cantered back to the wood. If something was worrying the sheep, this was no safe place for him.

When Jack Skehan came up at eight o'clock, two lambs were missing. He called a conclave of neighbours, and they sat in judgment upon Redpad's real and supposed delinquencies. Jack Skehan, who was very wrathful, purposed to put a notice to 'foxhunters and others' in the local press, and resort to drastic measures by means of strychnine; but the rest of the council shook their heads, for they had no wish to banish the hounds from Knockdane. Ultimately they all went down to consult Paddy Magragh, whose reputation for wisdom was deservedly great where animals were concerned. Paddy was smoking in his cabin, and after he had heard all that they had to say, he said: ''Twas a dog, not a fox, took the lamb lasht night, I'm thinking.' And this opinion he held to in spite of all arguments against it.

Nothing occurred that night, and the following day Paddy Magragh went alone to the field on the hill, and searched it thoroughly. He came upon the carcase of the lamb in the gorse, and he grinned, for he knew the ways of the Fur Folk, and their law, better than most of the men round Knockdane. The next day, however, there was great consternation. Jack Skehan's flock was untouched, but Dinny Purcell had left his ewes in a field adjoining the wood, and a young lamb lay torn and draggled upon the grass. The remains were taken triumphantly to Paddy Magragh, and the foxlike print of the fangs displayed; and secretly even his conviction was shaken, although he declared stoutly that it was a dog and not a fox that had done the deed.

With one accord it was decreed that poison should be laid down; and Jack Skehan went to Skelagh and bought strychnine, ostensibly to poison rats. Paddy Magragh had manfully opposed this scheme, for besides the fact that every fox hunted from Knockdane meant ten shillings in his pocket, he had 'stopped' the woods for twenty years, and took more pride in his foxes than he cared to own.

'If ye'll do as I tell ye,' he declared, 'ye'll lay the mate on a bit o' paper, an' if it's a fox, he'll never touch it at all, for he'd be afeard o' the paper, but if it's a dog he'll ate it.'

And this was the utmost they would grant him. Indeed, if they had believed him, he could not even have extorted this concession.

They 'doctored' some rabbit paunches with strychnine cunningly enough, and laid them seductively in the field. It was just before dark when they returned home, so they did not see how the magpie fluttered down a few minutes later, and spying the bait, sidled up to it. He did not altogether like the white paper, but he was hungry, and a paunch was a paunch. He picked it up gingerly and carried it off, for a magpie does not care to eat where he has killed--he is too accustomed to traps. Even an egg is impaled on his bill and conveyed away. Luckily for this magpie, however, it so happened that when he was flying into the wood he accidentally let the choice morsel fall out of sight among the trees. Therefore, although he went supperless to bed, he was fortunate in that he roosted in the branches that night, instead of lying claws upwards on the ground. Redpad found that paunch two days afterwards and ate a piece; but something peculiar about the morsel--in its taste or odour--warned him, and although he was very sick for some hours, yet he eventually recovered.

There was great jubilation the next morning when it was found that some of the poison had been taken; but the triumph was short-lived, for the following night another lamb had disappeared. The next evening Jack Skehan took his old gun and the little whippet-nosed dog who worked for him among the sheep all day, and sat up to watch. The dog sat beside him on a stone, and when he was not watching his master for orders, he gazed serenely above the heads of the sheep. Nothing, however, came, and at six o'clock, tired and chilled, Jack Skehan went home.

The poison was still there, but Redpad, made wary by his former experience with the rabbit paunch, passed it by, and besides, the mysterious rustling of the white paper underneath scared him. The real sheep slayer never touched it, for he seemed to prefer warm meat to cold.

On the two following nights again nothing was taken; but on the third morning news was brought that an older lamb had been killed in Jack Skehan's flock, and that the carcase had not been removed, so Paddy Magragh went up to the field.

'Bedam! I'll have the poison thick in every field on the farm, and put up the wire besides,' stormed Jack Skehan. 'Is al' me sheep to be worried on me that the gintry may hunt their dirthy foxes over me land? I'll have ivery mother's son o' thim prosecuted.'

'Now I'll go bail,' said Paddy Magragh, who had picked up the carcase, 'that 'twas a dog had this killed.'

'An' what dog in this counthry would touch a sheep, an' they wid 'em all day?' demanded Garry, Jack Skehan's young brother.

'Where have ye that felly o' yours shut at nights?' asked Paddy Magragh, looking at the little narrow-headed cur who slunk at Skehan's heel.

'Shure he slapes in the cowhouse, and I lets him out in the mornin'. But he'd never harm a sheep--I rared him meself.'

Paddy Magragh spat discreetly. 'I'd have me cowhouse door mended, an' the window blocked,' said he.

'Are ye sayin' that it was a dog all the while?' demanded Skehan irately.

'I do not. Maybe 'twas a fox took one or two--the first was a little small one, an' he sick-like. But this is a dog, shure enough.' And he looked again at Jack Skehan's sheep-dog, who was licking his paws thoughtfully.

'Well, I'll have the poison down again, an' that widout the paper. Shure there's enough o' talkin'. If there's another lamb worried on me, begob, but I'll poison every fox in Knockdane,' grumbled Jack Skehan.

Paddy Magragh said nothing, for he was crafty, and the Knockdane foxes were near to his heart and his pocket, but that night, after the bait had been laid, he went to the field, and, taking the carcase of the dead lamb, he put in enough strychnine to poison a dozen dogs or foxes either, and left it by the gate.

'It's a bit o' a risk,' he mumbled, 'but shure, if I don't have the right lad cot to-night, Jack Skehan is that bitther with the Hunt he'll not lave a fox in the woods, what wid the traps an' the poison.'

That night the hunger pain hurt Redpad sorely again; and if he had reflected upon the subject, he might have envied the squirrels, who, during that hard March weather, eked out a living upon germinating beechmast, or the badgers who dug up and ate the acrid tubers of the wild arum. But the Fur Folk do not possess the faculty of comparing their own lot with that of others. Perhaps they are all the happier that they lack it.

It was after midnight, and the moon was not long risen, when Redpad trotted by the gate of the field where the sheep were. He had no idea of taking a lamb. They were all able to run well by now, and he had too much respect for the hoofs of the old ewes to attack the entire flock. He crept under the gate (there be those who say that a fox will not do this, but the hedgerow rabbits whom the fox stalks know better) and then he found the carcase of the lamb. His recent experience with the rabbit paunch had made him wary, otherwise he might have eaten of it, for he was very hungry; but to his sharp senses something seemed not altogether right--perhaps the taint of human hands was still upon the food--and he passed on. For two hours he hunted in the fields, but the meagre results only whetted his appetite. Then he recollected the dead lamb, and desire for one full meal overcame his caution, and he returned to the place.

The moon, which had been obscured by sullen clouds, here brightened a little, and he caught sight of the lamb's carcase in the fern, gleaming in the dusk. He was hurrying up to it, when suddenly, by a wandering night breeze, he winded dog, and at the same instant the clouds broke entirely from the moon. Redpad stood petrified, for not thirty yards away, his back turned and his foot on the dead lamb, crouched Jack Skehan's tried sheep-dog. He looked up, and snarled at the sheep who stared fearfully at him. Evidently he was devouring his last night's kill, before attacking the flock. As Redpad watched, the dog tore off a mouthful and swallowed it. Then he growled again, and Redpad slunk silently away. The dog was lightly built, and smaller than he was, but he was thin and weak, and in no condition to fight. The Fur Folk seldom contest a kill, and besides, in Redpad's mind, dogs were so intimately connected with men that he was by no means certain that a man might not lurk under the wall. But as he went there was a half-strangled, hysterical yell behind him. The dog suddenly leaped up, and rushed madly towards the gate, as though in his terror his first instinct was to run home. His agonised eyes, fear-stricken, glinted white in the moonlight, and there was foam on his jowl. Redpad took the wall in one bound, but as he sprang he heard a dull thud, as the dog, leaping blindly in the extremity of his frenzy, struck the top bar of the gate, and fell back struggling convulsively.

Redpad ran as he had seldom run before, for he believed that the other pursued him, and that the mysterious madness would be upon him too if he were overtaken. But the hideous sounds which tore the silence of the night behind gradually grew fainter, and before he had crossed the demesne wall the dog lay still and stiff beside the torn lamb. There Paddy Magragh found him at dawn, and went home chuckling; and there also, a little later, his owner found him, and buried him secretly in the corner of a turnip field.

For obvious reasons Jack Skehan did not publish the story of that night abroad; but in the country round it was noticed ever after that his lambing ewes were kept in the home-field; and also that from this time onwards he ceased to be accompanied everywhere by his favourite dog. Until recently, indeed, the identity of the sheep killer was only known to three persons--to Skehan himself, who never divulged it; to Paddy Magragh, who kept the secret faithfully, and only revealed it long afterwards in order, on another occasion, to clear the name of the foxes of Knockdane; and lastly to Redpad. But for a long while the latter avoided the place; for in his memory dwelt the recollection of that strange death which men deal to those who break the primitive law which ordains that man is placed in dominion, not only over the beasts who eat his bread, but over the Wild Folk of the hills and woods, and that his dependents and possessions are sacred, and not to be harmed with impunity.

 

CHAPTER VI

FROM KILMANAGH TO KNOCKDANE

From Kilmanagh Hill the highlands stretch north and south mile after mile, with here and there the grey head of a limestone crag protruding through the heather. In the less rugged spots the peasants have collected the stones and piled them up, so as to enclose a tiny half-acre field with a wall as strong and high as a rampart; but for the most part the country lies derelict in moor and bog--the home of the curlew, plover and hill-fox. It is a weird land this, which in rockbound loneliness looks out over the cultivated plain. From its southern limits can be seen the sea, a pale streak in the distance; and often all day long the Atlantic mists settle down and wrap the hills in a chill pall until sunset, when the sun breaks out and the moor glows beneath him like a wet pebble. But to-night the sun had long since disappeared behind the cone of Galtymore, and the stars had taken his place, until they in their turn were drowned by the January moon which rose, polished with frost, above the highest of the eastern tiers of mountains. The western slopes of Kilmanagh were still hidden in deepest shadow, but on the east every bush and heather tuft was visible, and the faces of the limestone boulders glistened with rime.

A shadow glided through the bushes, and sprang upon a rock. The moonlight shone on the thick brush and ruddy pads which Knockdane knew so well. But Knockdane was ten miles away over the moors. What brought Redpad to Kilmanagh that winter's night? Two days before he had left his home covert, and travelled after sunset across the open country to the foot of these wild highlands which lie some four miles to the south of Knockdane. He had travelled along leisurely, hunting as he went, and sleeping under some rock or bush. He did not know why he thus wandered through an unknown country. He only felt a desire which he could not gratify--the desire which awakens earliest in the Fox People--the desire of Love. No matter how keenly January frosts bite or January sleet showers blow, they leave their native haunts, and wander away to seek a mate. Perhaps some mysterious hereditary instinct led Redpad to the hill, for on just such a night his sire had left the highlands and come to Knockdane three years before.

To-night Redpad climbed to the highest peak of Kilmanagh Hill to see the moon rise; and there, because he was solitary and the Love Desire so strong, he raised his long muzzle and yelped out his loneliness and longing. A sheep-dog below heard and answered with a deep 'row-row-row!' of disgust at the chain which prevented him rambling from his home.

'Yap! yap! yap!' shrilly and insistently Redpad, silhouetted against the moon, yelped a love song and challenge in one.

From the shadowed side of Kilmanagh rose a call less loud and defiant than his own. Redpad swung round, ears cocked, pad raised, but the still cold air of mid-January was silent but for the sheep-dog's bark. He whimpered a little and then plunged into the heather. The hillside was very dark, but Redpad's nose was keen and told him plainly who had passed that way. Where the main peak of Kilmanagh meets the more gradual slopes which rise up to meet it from the plain, is a little ravine, and here the night air bore a faint unmistakable taint to his nostrils--fox. Among the shadows ahead, his eyes, catlike, accustomed to see in the gloom, detected something which appeared more solid than a shadow. He approached it cautiously, while a low growl arose in his throat. A pair of ears twitched and then slid into the bushes. Redpad put his nose down and hunted out the trail as carefully as ever he had done that of hare or rabbit. By and by he came to a clearing. The moon had just risen above the sloping shoulders of Kilmanagh, and to fox eyes the hill was light. Here his quest ended, for not six yards from him sat the Belovèd. Her coat was as red as that of a winter squirrel, her brush was as thick as a pine sapling, and she was as desirable as a sunny evening in May. Therefore because she satisfied Redpad's longing he called her the Belovèd on the spot, and indeed he never knew her by any other name. He came forward cautiously, for he doubted what his reception might be, leaping this way and that and dropping on his forepads like a cub inviting a game. But the Belovèd had also been very solitary. She too had yelped the story of her loneliness to the moon. She trotted forward and touched Redpad caressingly, and then playfully rolled him over with her muzzle. They romped together for a few minutes, and either gave and received sundry love nips, and then they trotted down the hill in company.

The sheep-dog was silent, but a snipe rushed up crying 'kek-a-kek.' Rabbits were playing among the furze, and there Redpad and his Belovèd hunted together until the moon began to sink, and some wet clouds from the west rose over her face, bringing warm rain.

* * * * *

It still wanted some two hours till dawn when Redpad and his love came back up the hill, full-fed and contented. The Belovèd trotted in front, and her mate followed some little way behind. Suddenly the narrow goat-path took a sharp turn, and they came full upon an enormous fox. He stood half an inch higher at the shoulder than Redpad, and his coat was as grey as a badger's. He bared his teeth a little at the sight of Redpad, but most of his attention was concentrated upon the Belovèd. He crept forward with his long neck stretched out and touched her red shoulder. Redpad bared his double row of ivory fangs and the hair along his spine rose. In another moment he would have flown at his rival's throat, had not the Belovèd, as is the custom of the fox-kind, taken the quarrel upon herself. She flew at the Grey One with a fierce growl, and made her teeth meet in his flank. He would have fought with Redpad while he had a pad left to stand upon, but by the law of the Woods a fox may not attack a vixen in the love season. He felt the Belovèd's strong jaws close like a trap behind his ears, and fled. The vixen trotted back slowly to her lair, glancing back now and then over her shoulder and growling softly at the recollection of her recent skirmish and many other things. And Redpad, her accepted suitor, followed.

* * * * *

The afternoon was dull and raw. The frost had gone, and the fields in the plain were studded with pools of flood water, for much rain had fallen.

Redpad in his lair was awakened by a frightened woodcock which dropped down just in front of him. He sat up suspiciously with cocked ears, for it is not the way of woodcock after a clear night to shift their quarters undisturbed. There was a faint halloa at the top of the hill: 'Try-Tra-i-y.' Redpad slipped silently from the warm lair, and the Belovèd followed him, for they both knew the meaning of that sound. Suddenly there was a joyous 'yow-yow-yow.' 'Hike! hike!' came the shout again; and Redpad trotted down the hill, for although the heather hemmed him in, he knew well enough what was forward on the summit.

There is a low stone wall at the foot of Kilmanagh which separates a thick gorse brake from the fields, and Redpad squatted down behind it to watch. The hounds were gradually working down the hill. There was a man on a horse standing at a corner of the field, and all at once he waved his cap above his head. The Grey One was slinking down the fence. He had crossed the first field when a couple of hounds gave tongue close by. His heart failed him--he swung round to the covert again, leaped over Redpad with a snarl, and galloped back up the hill. The hounds broke into the field on his line, wheeled like a flock of plover, and came straight to where Redpad lay. It was time to be stirring--a strange covert is no refuge to a hunted fox. Redpad cantered gracefully a little further up the fence, and just as he leaped upon the wall in full view of the watcher in the field, some erratic puff of wind told him that his Belovèd had just passed that way up the hill to safety. He wavered for a moment, then the pack spoke again and he leaped. But he had not gone a hundred yards before the hounds gave tongue behind him, and a distant voice proclaimed: 'Gone away--awa-a-y--awa-a-y!'

From the very start Redpad knew where he was going, and set his mask towards Knockdane on the hill ten miles away. At first the fields he crossed were small, and cropped as bare as a billiard-table by starveling goats and sheep, while between them rose walls of loosely piled stone, five feet high and so broad that a horse could walk along the top. More than one horseman turned home that day with a red bandage round his horse's fetlock, for Kilmanagh stones are sharp.

Two miles slipped by. Redpad kept up his best pace, for he felt instinctively that he had not increased his lead during the last half-mile, and the scent was good that day. He was in the best of condition and ran strongly, but he did not know the hiding-places in this part of the country as well as those of Knockdane, and was obliged to trust more to his legs and less to his wits than was his custom.

Presently he turned to the right and climbed the steep hillside to the moor. There was a big rabbit hole in his path into which he tried to creep, but just below the surface it narrowed, and he was obliged to back out with his coat full of dust and several precious moments lost. He could see the hounds--a pied patch on the fields below him. At that distance they appeared to be crawling along, but as a matter of fact they were racing at top speed. Just behind them rode a horseman on a great black horse, but the rest were further behind.

Redpad ran on steadily, for he could see Knockdane with its crest of trees in the distance. The moor was boggy, and he crossed patches of quagmire which trembled even under his light weight. A big grey heron burst out of a pool and swung skywards, and the snipe sprang up in every direction; but Redpad never paused and the hounds never checked, until the men began to wonder if their horses would hold out, and took what short cuts they might.

Three miles further on the moor sloped down to the tilled lands again. Redpad was cantering along a bohireen[3] when he suddenly came full upon a countryman mending a wall. The man sprang up and shouted, and a big yellow sheep-dog darted from his heel. Redpad cleared the fence at a bound, and went away over a turnip-field with the collie not half a dozen yards behind. The field was a wide one, and although he succeeded in shaking off his pursuer on the other side, yet the sudden effort told upon him. His tongue was out, and now and then his gallop dropped into a hurrying trot.

[3] Narrow lane.

By now he was in fields which he knew well, and tried all the familiar hiding-places one after another. There is a 'shore' by Kilmacabee and a badger set in Charlesfort Wood; but the rain had filled the former with water, and the latter was blocked up.

The early January evening began to close in when the home covert was still three miles away, but the scent lay stronger than ever on field and bog. Redpad was spattered with mud and his breath came in gasps, but he ran on gallantly over ploughed fields where the plover rose screaming at his approach, and over pastures where the sheep stampeded. Once he met a donkey-cart crawling down a road. The old woman in it screamed and waved her shawl at his approach, and obliged him to turn a hundred yards out of his way, but even a hundred yards is far to go when limbs are weary, and there is withal the certain knowledge that the pursuers are gaining ground. Nevertheless he could see Knockdane more and more clearly, and knew that there was only another half-mile, and the river to be forded, before he could lie down in the old 'earth.' Looking back he saw that the hounds, though tired themselves, were coming on faster than ever, and he knew that he must run his best if he would arrive at the ford by the old willow before them. His heart thudded as though it would burst its way through his ears, and his famous ruddy pads felt as though each were bound to the earth. More than once he lay down with closed eyes, and had he been a soft-hearted fox or a vixen he would have died there and then; but as he was as gallant a fox as ever ran before the hounds to a ten mile point, he rose stiffly and stumbled aimlessly forward again.

As he crossed the brow of the hill from whence the slope fell steeply down to the river, the sun came out over the shoulder of Knockdane and shone wanly on the flood pools in the meadows. The mists were already rising, and the great solemn woods on the other side lay in shadow. The waterhens feeding on the river bank scuttled away as he limped down to the water's edge.

The river was in full flood and rushed hurrahing seawards, carrying foam flakes and branches of trees in its coffee-coloured current. It filled its banks to the brim, and not a ripple was left to tell where the ford had been. The willow tree which grew beside the spot was partially uprooted and drooped into the water with its branches festooned with flotsam. Redpad paused bewildered, for never before had this ford failed him at his need. Just then the hounds broke over the brow of the hill and tore down the slope. Redpad saw them, and determined to make a desperate bid for freedom. Very slowly and stiffly he crept out along the horizontal trunk of the willow, and so into the smaller branches above the water, where a hound could not venture. The pack came up and crowded baying round the tree. Now and then one tried to follow along the trunk, but they were less nimble than a fox and slipped back into the water. Redpad lay crouched flat with his teeth bared, and no hound could reach him from below.

Presently two men rode down and dismounted from their tired horses. One was the man on the black horse who had ridden so well that day, and the other was the huntsman. The latter tried to climb out along the tree to Redpad, but it swayed so perilously that he was forced to return.

'It's no use, sir,' he said. 'I am afraid we can't reach him there. Shure, it's a pity for the hounds not to chop him afther all, afther the way they hunted him.'

'It was as fine a hunt as ever I saw,' answered the other. Then looking at Redpad's half-closed eyes, he added: 'But that fellow will never run again--he is dead beat, and it is a pity they did not run into the poor brute back yonder where he lay down. At all events he has cheated us of his brush, for he was as plucky a fox as I ever saw.'

With this, his requiem, in his ears, Redpad stretched out his muzzle on his pads and closed his eyes, as he had done many a morning in the old earth in Knockdane. The light of the after-glow lit up the bright coats of the two men and the tired hounds behind. They were only a few yards away, yet he knew that they could not reach him, and therefore paid no further attention to them. The water lip-lapped round the willow, and the roar of the flood deepened as twilight fell, and the night wind shivered in the aspens. A waterhen called, and a flight of wild duck, quacking softly, flew over the hill. Redpad straightened himself slowly--then he gave a lurch, and dropped into the water. The broad stream caught him, and swept him out into the midcurrent. He struggled a little, but the eddies bound down each tired limb, and the ripples broke against his closed eyes. The water, which had so nearly cut short his life in early days, was a good friend to him now. As his body was borne down the misty stream, away from the clamour of the hounds into the august silences of the night, the waves lapped gently over his head; and under their kisses, his spirit drifted quietly out to the Grey Fields of Sleep where the souls of the Fur Folk go.

There is no rain known there nor any sun, and no one is ever weary or hungry or afraid, but they lie wrapped in warm mists in a country where there is no noise nor bright light burning. They sleep on there and take their rest, knowing neither joy nor grief nor hope nor disappointment until time and space shall be no more.

The moon rose over the mountains, and the flood sang joyfully on its way to the tumbling waves in the estuary.

[The end]
M. D. Haviland's short story: Story Of Redpad The Fox

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