He had the noiselessly padding gait and the furtive air of a fox. Mentally and morally he was a fox; plus the keener and finer brain of a collie. His dark and deepset eyes had the glint of the wild, rather than the straight-forward gaze of a collie. Yet those eyes were a dog’s and not a fox’s. A fox has the eye of a cat, not of a dog. The iris is not round, but is long and slitted, like a cat’s. In bright sunlight it closes to a vertical line, and does not contract to a tiny circle, like dog’s or man’s. Nor did Ruff have the long and couchant hindlegs and short catlike forelegs of Pitchdark. His were the honestly sturdy legs and sturdy pads of a collie. The wolf is the dog’s brother. They be of one blood. They can and do mate as readily as dog and dog. Dog and fox are far different. Their cousinship is remote. Their physique is remoter;—too remote to permit of blending. There is almost as much of the cat as of the dog in a fox’s cosmos;—too much of it to permit of interbreeding with the cat-detesting dog. Yet Ruff and Pitchdark were loving pals. They profited materially from their association; so far as food-getting went. They were inseparable comrades, through the fat summer and autumn and in the lean winter which followed. In the bitter weather, when rabbits were few and when most birds had flown south and when rodents were holed in, it was young Ruff whose daring and strength enabled them to snatch fawns from snow-lined deer-yards in the mountain creases and to raid sheepfolds and rip through flimsy hencoop doors. He kept them alive and he kept them in good condition. Daily he grew larger and stronger and wilier. At a year, he weighed a full sixty pounds; and he had the strength and uncanny quickness of a tiger-cat. It was he now who led; while Pitchdark followed in meek adoration. Such foxes as they chanced to meet fled in sullen terror before the collie’s assault. Ruff did not like foxes. The next autumn brought forth the hunters. A few city folk and farm-boys ranged the hills with fowling piece and with or without bird dog or rabbit hound. These novices were ridiculously easy for Ruff and Pitchdark to avoid. They offered still less menace to Whitefoot ranging in solitary comfort on the thither side of the mountain wall. But the real hunters of the region were a more serious obstacle to smug comfort and to safety. They were lanky or stumpy men in woolly old clothes and accompanied by businesslike hounds. These men did not bother with mere sport or pot hunting. Red fox pelts brought this year $11.50 each, uncured, from the wholesaler down at Heckettville. Fox hunting was a recognised form of livelihood here in the upland valley district.