He awoke, late in the morning. Some newborn sense, in addition to his normal fear, warned him to stay in his den throughout the daylight hours. And he did so; sleeping part of the time and part of the time nosing about amid the flurry of feathers in vain search for some overlooked bone or fragment of meat. Dusk and hunger drove him forth again. And, as before, he sought the farmstead which had furnished him with so delicious a meal. But as he drew near, the sound of voices from indoors and the passing of an occasional silhouette across the bright window shades of the kitchen warned him of danger. When, as the kitchen light was blown out, he ventured to the chicken coop he found the door too fast-barred to yield to his hardest scratch. Miserably hungry and disappointed he slunk away. Three farms did Bobby visit that night before he found another with an unlatched henhouse door. There the tragedy of the preceding evening was repeated. Lugging an eight-pound Dominic rooster, Bobby made scramblingly for his mile-distant lair. Behind him again raged sound and fury. The eight-pound bird with its dangling legs and tail feathers kept tripping up the fleeing dog; until, acting again on instinct, Bobby slung the swaying body over his shoulder, fox-fashion, and thus made his way with less discomfort. By the third night the collie had taken another long step in his journey backward to the wild. When a dog kills a chicken every one within a half mile is likely to be drawn by the sound. When a fox or wolf or coyote kills a chicken, the deed is done in dexterous silence; with no squawks or flurry of feathers to tell the story. Nature teaches the killer this secret. And Nature taught it to Bobby; as she has taught it to other gone-wild dogs. As a result, his depredations, thereafter, left no uproar behind them. Also, he learned presently the vulpine art of hoarding;—in other words, when safety permitted, to stay on the ground until he had not only slain but eaten one chicken, and then to carry another bird back to his lair for future use. It cut down the peril of over-many trips to neighbouring coops. In time, he learned to rely less and less on the close-guarded chickens in the vicinity of his den, and to quarter the farm country for a radius of ten or more miles in search of food. The same queer new instinct taught him infinite craft in keeping away from humans and in covering his tracks. He was doing no more than are thousands of foxes throughout the world. There was no miracle in his new-found deftness as a forager. Nature was merely telling her ancient and simple secrets to a wise little brain no longer too clogged by association with mankind to learn them. There was a profitable side line to Bobby’s chicken hunts. The wilder woods, back of Midwestburg, abounded in rabbits for such as had the wit to find them. And Bobby acquired the wit.