He peered around the corner of the half-open door of the tool-house. From the interior arose the hated dog-smell, ten times stronger than before. But he knew by nose and by hearing that the dog was no longer in there. He was correct in this, as in most of his surmises. Not five minutes earlier, the early-rising Dick Logan had opened the tool-house door and convoyed thence his pedigreed collie, Jean, to the kitchen for her breakfast. In the corner of the tool-house was a box half filled with rags. Down among the rags nestled and squirmed and muttered a litter of seven pure-bred collie pups, scarce a fortnight old. Man-scent and dog-scent filled the air; scaring and disgusting the hesitant Whitefoot. Stark hunger spurred him on. A fleeting black shadow slipped noiselessly swift into the tool-house and then out again. Through the welter of rain, Whitefoot was making for his mile-distant lair; at top speed; pausing not to glance over his shoulder; straining every muscle to get away from that place of double peril and to his waiting family. No need to waste time in confusing the trail. The sluicing rain was doing that. Between his teeth the fox carried a squealing and struggling fat collie puppy. Keen as was his own need for food, he did not pause to devour or even to kill the plump morsel he had snatched up. Nor did his pinpoint teeth so much as prick through the fuzzy fat sides of his prey. Holding the puppy as daintily as a bird dog might retrieve a wounded partridge, he sped on. At the mouth of the warren, Pitchdark was waiting for him. She had brought her babies out of the death hole; though too late. They lay strewn on the rain-sick ground in front of her. She herself was crouched for shelter in the lee of a rock that stood beside the hole. Whitefoot dropped the collie pup in front of his mate; and prepared to join her in the banquet. Pitchdark nosed the blind, helpless atom of babyhood; as though trying to make out what it might be. The puppy, finding himself close to something warm and soft and furry, crept instinctively toward this barrier from the cold and wet which were striking through to the very heart of him. At his forward motion, Pitchdark snarled down at him. But as his poking nose chanced to touch her, the snarl merged suddenly into a croon. With her own sharp nose, she pushed him closer to her and interposed her body between him and the rain. Whitefoot, the water cascading from his splendid coat, stood dripping and staring. Failing to make any sense of his mate’s delay in beginning to devour the breakfast he had brought along at such danger to himself, he took a step forward, his jaws parting for the first mouthful of the feast. Pitchdark growled hideously at him and slashed at his advancing face.