Tubby’s raiding hour was about five in the afternoon. At that hour the shadows of the ice-house and the barn lay wide across the mowing-field--the proper time and color for things to happen. And there in the close-cut field, as if he had come up out of a burrow, sat old Tubby, looking as big as a bear! Pup stole softly out to meet him, moving over till he was between the chuck and the ice-house hole. It was a deliberate act and one of complete abandon. Things must this time be finished. And what a perfect bit of strategy it was! Hugging the ground when the chuck rose high on his haunches to reconnoiter, Pup would “freeze” till Tubby dropped down and went to feeding, then, gliding like a snake forward, he would flatten behind a stone or a tuft of grass, and work forward and wait. The ground rose slightly to Pup’s disadvantage, and he was maneuvering to avoid the uphill rush when Tubby heard something off in the woods and turned with a dash for his hole. It was head-on and terrific! And the utter shock of it, the moral shock, was more terrific! Neither knew for an instant just what had happened; the suddenness, the precision, the amazing boldness and quality of the attack putting Pup almost out of action. But it was precisely the jar old Tubby needed. Every flabby fiber of him was fight. The stub feet snapped into action; the chunk of a body shot forward, ramming Pup amidships, sending him to the bottom of the slope, Tubby slashing like a pirate with his terrible incisors. But the touch of those long teeth brought Pup short about. He likes the taste of pain. He is a son of battle. And in a moment like this he is possessed of more than common powers of body and soul. The fur flew; the grass flew; but there was scarcely a sound as the two fighters tumbled and tossed a single black-brown body like a ball of pain. They sprang apart and together again, whirled and dived and dodged as they closed, each trying for a hold which neither dared allow. But Pup got plenty of hair, choking, slippery hair, and leathery hide by the mouthful, while the twisting, snapping woodchuck cut holes in Pup’s thin skin with teeth which would punch holes in sheet steel. And Tubby was fighting with his head as well as with teeth and toes. He was cooler than Pup. He had a single-track mind, and it ran straight to his burrow. The head-work was perfectly clear; the whole powerful play going forward with the nicest calculation, mad as it appeared to be in the wild rough-and-tumble. There was method in Tubby’s madness. He was fighting true to plan. But Pup was fighting to kill, and he lost his head. It was to win his hole, and life, and the pursuit of happiness on these ancestral acres that the woodchuck was fighting; and, as the two laid about them and rolled over and over, they kept rolling nearer and nearer to the ice-house and a burrow under the corner.