For an hour or more after we went to bed that night Addison and I lay talking about the affair, but we could think of no explanation of the strange occurrence and at last fell asleep. The next morning, however, the solution of the mystery flashed into Addison's mind. As we were dressing at five o'clock, he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed in a queer voice: "I know what killed those colts!" "What?" I asked. "That fox bed!" For a whole minute we stood there, half dressed, looking at each other in consternation. Without doubt, the blame for the loss of the colts was on us. What the consequences might be we hardly dared to think. "What shall we do?" I exclaimed. Addison looked alarmed as he answered in a low tone, "Keep quiet--till we think it over." "We must tell the old Squire," I said. "But there's Willis," Addison reminded me. "It was Willis who made the bed, you know." The old clearing was, as I have said, a great place for foxes; and the preceding fall Addison and I, wishing to add to the fund we were accumulating for our expenses when we should go away to college, had entered into a kind of partnership with Willis Murch to do a little trapping up there. Addison and I were little more than silent partners, however; Willis actually tended the traps. But there are years, as every trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox into a steel trap by any amount of artfulness. What the reason is, I do not know, unless some fox that has been trapped and that has escaped passes the word round among all the other foxes. There were plenty of foxes coming to the clearing; we never went up there without seeing fresh signs about the old barn. Yet Willis got no fox. What is more strange, it was so all over New England that fall; foxes kept clear of steel traps. As the fur market was quick, certain city dealers began sending out offers of "fox pills" to trappers whom they had on their lists. Willis received one of those letters and showed it to us. The fox pills were, of course, poison and were to be inclosed in little balls of tallow and laid where foxes were known to come. Trappers were advised to use them but were properly cautioned how and where to expose them. After picking up one of the pills, a fox would make for the nearest running water as fast as he could go; and that was the place for the trapper to look for him, for, after drinking, the fox soon expired. It has been argued that poison is more humane than the steel trap, since it brings a quick death; but both are cruel. There are also other considerations that weigh against the use of poison; but at that time there was no law against it. The furrier who wrote to Willis offered to send him a box of those pills for seventy-five cents. We talked it over and agreed to try it, and Addison and I contributed the money.