Page:Redcoat (1927).djvu/127

 and stomach soon produced the desired effect and the poisonous meat came up with a rush. But Redcoat had already absorbed much of the poison in his system and he went away into the spruces and found a dark place under the top of a fallen tree, and there he laid for the rest of the day a very sick fox. It was hours before Nature threw off the effect of the poison and he finally went to the brook to slake his terrible thirst.

It had been a hard lesson and had nearly cost him his life, but he had learned it well. Never again would he touch any meat he did not kill himself. The whole thing had been too easy and he had been a fool, but they would never catch him again in just that way.

It did not matter that it was a felonious offence to lay poison in this way, where a dog instead of a fox might have gotten it, for some men fear not the laws of God or man and those who lay poison in this manner are of that class.

In the old days when Redcoat had been a pup tagging about after his sire with the