I could see nothing, but I heard a roar of dreadful sound steadily closing in a circle around me. No doubt the mean old foxes wished then they had let the Dorking roosters alone. Closer it came and more dreadful. Never again did I want to hear such sounds coming at me; even when I knew what was making them. And then away off, beyond Pryors', and Hoods', and Dovers', I could see a line of tiny specks coming toward me, and racing flying things that must have been people on horses riding back and forth to give the foxes no chance to find a hiding place. No chance! Laddie and the Princess, Mr. Pryor and father, and all of them were after the bad old foxes; and they were going to get them; because they'd have no chance--Not with a solid line of men with raving dogs surrounding them, and people on horseback racing after them, no! the foxes would wish now that they had left the pigs and lambs alone. In that awful roaring din, they would wish, Oh how they would wish, they were birds and could fly! Fly back to their holes like the Bible said they had, where maybe they LIKED to live, and no doubt they had little foxes there, that would starve when their mammies were caught alive, to save their skins. To save their skins! I could hear myself breathe, and feel my teeth click, and my knees knock together. And then! Oh dear! There they came across our cornfield. Two of them! And they could fly, almost. At least you could scarcely see that they touched the ground. The mean old things were paying up for the pigs and lambs now. Through the fence, across the road, straight toward me they came. Almost red backs, nearly white beneath, long flying tails, beautiful pointed ears, and long tongues, fire red, hanging from their open mouths; their sleek sides pulsing, and that awful din coming through the woods behind them. One second, the first paused to glance toward either side, and threw back its head to listen. What it saw, and heard, showed it. I guess then it was sorry it ever took people's ham, and their greens, and their blankets; and it could see and hear that it had no chance--to save its skin. "Oh Lord! Dear Lord! Help me!" I prayed. It had to be me, there was no one else. I never had opened the big doors; I thought it took a man, but when I pushed with all my might--and maybe if the hairs of our heads were numbered, and the sparrows counted, there would be a little mercy for the foxes--I asked for help; maybe I got it. The doors went back, and I climbed up the ladder to the haymow a few steps and clung there, praying with all my might: "Make them come in! Dear Lord, make them come in! Give them a chance! Help them to save their skins, O Lord!"