The two silver foxes had the forest and farmland largely to themselves. The few reds they met did not attack them or affiliate with them at that hungry time of year. The winter winds and the ice-storms made Whitefoot’s coat shine and thicken as never had it done on scientifically balanced rations. The life of the wild put new depth to Pitchdark’s narrow chest and gave her muscular power and sinew to spare. Quizzical Dame Nature had lifted them from man’s wisest care; as though in object lesson of her own infinitely more efficient methods for conditioning her children. Late January brought a sore-throat thaw and with it a melting of drift and ice-pack. Incidentally it ushered in the yearly vulpine mating season. Spring was early that year. But before the frost was out of the ground, Pitchdark had chosen her nursery. It was by no means so elaborate nor sanitary as had been the costly brood-nests at the kennel. Indeed it would have struck horror to the heart of any scientific breeder. For it was merely a woodchuck hole in an upland meadow, at the forest edge, a short mile from a straggling farmstead. Even here Whitefoot’s inspired prowess as a digger was not called into play. His sole share toward securing the home was to thrash the asthmatically indignant old woodchuck that had dug the burrow. Then Pitchdark made her way cautiously down the hole and proceeded to enlarge it a little at the shallow bottom. That was all the home-making done by the pair. Then, of a windy night, just before the first of April, the vixen did not join her mate in his expedition for loot. And as he panted homeward before dawn with a broken-winged quail between his jaws, he found her lying in the burrow’s hollow, with five indeterminate-looking babies nuzzling close to her soft side. Then began days, or rather nights, of double foraging for Whitefoot. For it is no light thing to provide food for a den-ridden mate and, indirectly, for five hungry and husky cubs. Nor was the season propitious for food-finding. The migratory birds, for the most part, had not shifted north. The rabbits for some silly reason of their own had changed their feeding grounds to the opposite valley. Farmers had suffered too many depredations from Whitefoot and Pitchdark during the past month to leave their henroosts as hospitably open as of yore. The first day’s hunting netted only a sick crow that had tumbled from a tree. Whitefoot turned with disgust from this find. For, though he would have been delighted to dine on the rankest of carrion, yet in common with all foxes, he could not be induced to touch any bird of prey. That night he foraged again; in spite of having outraged his regular custom by hunting in daylight. There was no fun in hunting, this night. For a wild torrent of rain had burst out of the black clouds which all day had been butting their way across the windy sky.