United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
No one is permitted to enter it without him. Though his myrmidons are fully aware of its existence, and can give a shrewd guess at its contents, only two of them have set foot within it. The two thus privileged are Clement Lanyere and Lupo Vulp.
In response to this insulting defiance, Vulp hurled himself on the intruder, and bowled him over into the snow. The fight was fast and furious; now one gained the advantage, then the other. The grass beneath them became gradually bared of snow by their frantic struggles, and marked here and there by a bunch of fur or a spot of blood.
During the mother badger's absence from home, an unlooked-for event almost the exact repetition of an incident in the training of Vulp, the young fox had happened in the education of her cubs. Her mate, hunting in an upland fallow, had been surprised by a poacher, and, long before daybreak, had discreetly returned to the "set."
At last the rival fox, his cheek torn badly beneath the eye, showed signs of exhaustion; his breath came in quick, loud gasps; and Vulp, pressing the attack, forced him to flee for life to a thicket on the brow of the slope.
Vulp fastened his needle-like teeth in the throat, and each of his sisters gripped a leg, while together they jerked, strained, scolded, and threatened, till the mother, fearing lest the commotion would betray their whereabouts to some lurking foe, rated her noisy progeny and in anger drove them away.
"I am named Lupo Vulp, your Highness, and have for many years been a money-scrivener in the employ of these two gentlemen," replied the individual addressed. "Thou knowest all their transactions?" said Charles. "No man better," answered Lupo; "unless it be Clement Lanyere." "You remember a certain deed of mortgage from Sir Ferdinando Mounchensey to your two employers?" said Lanyere.
Lupo Vulp was in all respects worthy of his employers, being just as wily and unscrupulous as they were, while, at the same time, he was rather better versed in legal tricks and stratagems, so that he could give them apt counsel in any emergency. A countenance more replete with cunning and knavery than that of Lupo Vulp, it would be difficult to discover.
And gradually each of these woodland rovers grew acquainted with the peculiar whims and habits of the other. Vulp loved to follow stealthily the trail of the rabbit, and then to lie in wait till some imagined cause of alarm sent Bunny back through the "creep" and almost straight into her enemy's open jaws.
Vulp had been taught that his fangs, also, were a trap from which there should be no escape, and so he held on firmly, trying meanwhile to shake the life from his victim. He pressed the polecat to the ground, and frantically endeavoured to disengage its hold by thrusting his fore-paws beneath its muzzle; but every effort alike was useless.
Lying among the boulders on the shore, I watched through a field-glass the antics of some birds that wheeled and soared above the cliffs, when, to my surprise, I saw Vulp crawl slowly along a shelf of rock above a deep, dark cavern. His movements, somehow, appeared unnatural.
Word Of The Day