Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/179

Rh straight into the hillside for about three feet; then it angled sharply along the side of a hidden rock, and ran back some twenty feet more. From off the main shaft branched different galleries. One led to a storehouse, and another to a chamber where the garbage of the den was buried; for there are no better housekeepers among the wild folk than the foxes. Last and best hidden of all was the sleeping-room, fully twelve inches across, and carefully lined with soft, dry grass.

The perpendicular air shaft ran from the deepest part of the tunnel to the centre of a dense thicket on the hillside. In an irregular curve of some twenty feet, two more entrances were dug. Both of these joined the main shaft after describing an angle. Last of all was the emergency exit, the final touch which makes a fox home complete. It is always concealed carefully, and is never used except in times of great danger. This one was dug down through a decayed chestnut stump some two feet high, hidden in a fringe of bushes some distance up the hillside, and wound itself among the roots, and connected with the sleeping-chamber. Back of the main entrance lay a chestnut log fully three feet through, and screened from the hilltop by a thicket interlaced with greenbrier. This was the watchtower and sun-parlor of the fox family. From it they could survey the whole valley, while one bound would bring them to any one of the regular entrances.

On a day in early April, full of sunshine and showers blowing across a soft spring sky, the old dog