At a few minutes past three the long snout, yellow eyes, and red tongue of Grey Fox appeared round the very corner where the polecat had showed. Whilst lying in the brake, he had heard the cock crow, and with his mate had come after it. They had come as fast as they could lay pad to ground; they were starving. For three days they had found nothing to eat over the miles and miles of country they had searched, and now at last within four leaps, there stood this fat rooster scratching away the snow. Was ever so tempting a morsel, ever so easy a victim, exposed to the eyes of ravenous wildlings? Yet the unusual silence excited Grey Fox’s suspicions of a trap. Might not the bird be a bait, a decoy to lure him into the gin where he had already left one of his claws? If not, what was cock-a-doodle doing there alone? After all it was too great a risk. But by this the little vixen—she looked but half the size of her mate—who at first kept at his brush, had come more and more forward till her mask was side by side with his. Did she by whisper or sign of eye or lip banish his scruples, goad him into action? We do not know. But the next instant he launched himself towards chanticleer, who saw him coming and raised cries so penetrating that they caused the hind and the fiddler to drop knife and fork and rush to the yard. Grey Fox had just seized the cock when the fiddler burst out, and making the most of his long legs, succeeded in heading him from the passage that led to the moor. The fox refused to drop his prey, though the huge wings kept flapping in his face and hindering him in the race with the fiddler, who pursued him over the dung-heap and around the yard, to the amusement of the rest of the party crowding the gateway. As he ran, the fiddler trod on the polecat, whose sudden appearance so startled the fox that he dropped the cock, crossed the wall to the rickyard, and rejoined his mate, who had hurried away to the moor at the first shout of the fiddler. Merry as the party was before, it was twice as merry now, yet there was not a child, nay, nor a grown-up around that festive board, who would not have been sorry to know that in the act of crossing the wall Grey Fox had espied the hare and was already plotting his destruction. For in the earth amidst the furze, Grey Fox, who had an old score to settle, and the vixen, who had searched for him when a helpless leveret, sat mask to mask, with wrinkled brow, scheming how they should take him. It was a matter of life or death to them, at least so they themselves regarded it; and the moment their plans were laid they were all eagerness to put them into execution. Their eyes glowed with excitement; twice they rose and went to the mouth of the earth to observe the light; the third time they stole away to the rickyard.