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 he could see the surface of the brook. Suddenly, however, a slight movement to his right drove this plan out of his mind.

Crouching close to the ground, a big male gray fox was creeping slowly across the pinestraw carpet. Chad's eyes gleamed as his lips silently framed two words. "Old Ringtail," he whispered under his breath and his hand tightened on the barrel of his gun. Yet, though the fox was within easy range, the boy made no further move.

He owed old Ringtail a grudge. The big gray fox, with the strangely barred tail which was unlike the tail of any other gray fox ever seen in that region, had raided the plantation poultry flock on at least two occasions and had carried off at least two fine hens. But to Chad, Ringtail had long been a sort of hero because of the almost incredible skill which he had shown in baffling the best fox hunters and the best fox dogs of the neighborhood. Many stories were told of his cunning, and at least some of them were true; and the boy, though he himself was an ardent hunter, found a keen pleasure in these accounts of Ringtail's prowess and was conscious of a certain sympathy for the old dog fox who had proved himself more than a match for the finest hunting packs. True, when he had satisfied himself by an examination of certain tell-tale tracks that it was Ringtail who had stolen his hens, Chad had