The newly optimistic Rance was mistaken in all his forecasts. The two fugitives were not scouting for breakfast at sunrise. Hours earlier they twisted their way in through the narrow little opening of an unguarded chicken-house belonging to a farm six miles from the kennel. Thither they were drawn by the delicious odour of living prey. There, like a million foxes since the birth of time, they slew without noise or turmoil. There they glutted themselves; carrying away each a heavy fowl for future feasting; bearing off their plunder in true vulpine fashion with the weight of the bird slung scientifically over the bearer’s withers. Daybreak found them lying snugly asleep in a hollow windfall tree that was open at either end and which lay lengthwise of a nick in the hillside, with briars forming an effective hedge all about it. Nor did the best casting efforts of Ruby, the partners’ foxhound, succeed in following their cleverly confused trail across a pool and two brooks. In the latter brook, they had waded for nearly a furlong before emerging on dry ground at the same side. Thus set in a winter of bare sustenance for the runaways. They kept to no settled abiding place, but drifted across country; feasting at such few farmsteads as had penetrable hencoops; doing wondrous teamwork in the catching of rabbits and partridges; holing in under windfalls or in rock-clefts when blizzards made the going bad. It was the season when foxes as a rule run solitary. Seldom in early winter do they hunt in pairs and never at any season in packs. But these two black and silver waifs were bound together not only by early association but by mutual inexperience of the wild. And while this inexperience did not blur nor flaw their marvellous instinct, they found it more profitable to hunt together than alone. Only once or twice in their winter’s foraging did they chance upon any of the high-country’s native red foxes. A heavy hunting season had shifted most of the reds to a distant part of the county; as is the way with foxes that are overpressed by the attentions of trappers and hounds. In that region, pink coats and hunting horses and foxhound packs were unknown. But many a mountain farmer eked out his lean income by faring afield with a brace of disreputable but reliable mongrel hounds and a fowling piece as disreputably reliable; eager for the flat price of $10 to $12 per skin offered by the nearest wholesale dealer. This sum of course was for the common red fox; silver foxes being as unknown to the region at large as were dinosaurs. (The dealer paid the farmer-huntsman perhaps $11 per skin. The pelt was then cured and dressed and mounted and equipped with snappers; at a total price in labour and material of perhaps $6 at most. After which, in marketable form, it sold at retail from $60 to $75 or even higher. Thus, there was money for every one concerned—except possibly for the ultimate buyer.)