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Swiftly it came to us and sped on, never ceasing its peculiar cry; and as it swept on, and we found it was made up of innumerable flying creatures, we remembered Dan's "flying foxes."
With regard to foxes, they, like the wolves, are distributed almost universally over the globe; and exhibit a like variety of forms and colours, according to the different localities which they inhabit. Their name is legion. As the smallest representatives of the wild dogs, we find in Africa the curious little creatures known as the Fennecs.
In the center was a large fox's head, and the fox wore a shrewd and knowing expression and had large spectacles over its eyes and a small golden crown with shiny points on top of its head. While the travelers were looking with curiosity at this beautiful arch there suddenly marched out of it a company of soldiers only the soldiers were all foxes dressed in uniforms.
He is supposed to come out at sunset, like the foxes and the bats, and has been seen in the distance on bright moonlight nights striding over the Cotswold uplands. If any one approach him, he hurries away in the opposite direction; yet he is not queer in the head, but strong and in the prime of life. Then there is that very common character "the village impostor."
Then he gave the fox fair words, but this availed nought; so he said to him softly, 'Verily, you foxes are the most pleasant spoken of folk and the subtlest in jest, and this is but a jest of thine; but all times are not good for sport and jesting. 'O dolt, answered the fox, 'jesting hath a limit, that the jester overpasses not, and deem not that God will again give thee power over me, after having once delivered me from thee. Quoth the wolf, 'It behoves thee to endeavour for my release, by reason of our brotherhood and fellowship, and if thou deliver me, I will assuredly make fair thy reward. 'The wise say, rejoined the fox, "Fraternize not with the ignorant and wicked, for he will shame thee and not adorn thee, nor with the liar, for if thou do good, he will hide it, and if evil, he will publish it;" and again, "There is help for everything but death: all may be mended, save natural depravity, and everything may be warded off, except Fate."
A space of 520 feet diameter, thus enclosed at Lagore, was divided into sundry timbered compartments, which were found filled up with mud or earth, from which were taken "vast quantities of the bones of oxen, swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses, and asses."
He himself beguiled his leisure with trapping foxes, or hanging a dead dog from a tree and watching the hungry martens in their efforts to reach it. Towards the close of winter, all found abundant employment in nursing themselves or their neighbors, for the inevitable scurvy broke out with virulence.
Sometimes, for sport's sake, as his journals tell us, he would hunt foxes and go fowling. When he came in for the evening, after he had bathed and was anointed, he would call for his bakers and chief cooks, to know if they had his dinner ready.
He was by no means so sure of himself when it was a matter of outwitting men who were as cute as foxes; and "these fellows" was an unpleasantly vague description. It meant, no doubt, the Irish enemy, who, indeed, neither the Colonel nor Willie could manage to regard as an enemy at all. But it gave him very little idea of the form in which the enemy might present himself.
His white hair was in almost startling contrast with the darkly foreign face, the small black moustache, the dark eyes, almost too large and soft and heavily lashed for a man's eyes. The boy who was with him was very unlike his father. He had taken after his mother, who had once been Mary Creagh, of whom some one had said she had the colour of the foxes.
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