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 felt quite safe. But they would always come back again. The outside was so strange and so alluring.

It was a wonderful morning. Birds were singing in the treetops, and the woods were full of the sounds of joyous life. Crows were cawing in the distance, and a woodpecker was pounding on a dead tree only a few rods away. All of these sounds made the little foxes cock their small ears and look very alert.

They stayed out only two or three hours that first day, but it was the beginning of such glorious times. Days full of bright sunshine, and sweet smelling odors, days of wonderful frolics. For the small foxes were always playing. Usually it was a sort of "tag" game. One would pick up a bit of wood, or perhaps some feather, or bit of skin left over from the morning breakfast and run with it, and all the others would try to catch the playful one and get the coveted morsel away from him.

This play very soon grew into sham fights, and gradually developed that real fighting