f the big black-and-gray dog pup began to open. It seemed he had absorbed all the strength of his weakling sister to add to his own, an

e weakling of her little brood. The race is to the swift in Nature's scheme. The black-and-gray pup always secured the most warmth because he burrowed forcibly under his brothers and sisters. He secured the lion's share of nutriment because he was strong enough to force his wa

turf of the Down Nature would see speedily to its sepulture, for Nature employs many grave-diggers and suffe

dy demanded as much nourishment as any two ordinary youngsters of his age. The sunken hollows of the Lady Desdemona's sides gave extraordinary prominence to her low-hanging and not too well-filled dugs. Her shape and general appearance were strangely different from those of the sleek and shining

e seal upon a merely beautiful young animal; and now she had elements of grandeur and dignity, of fineness and nobility, such as no amount of human care and kindness can give even to the handsomest of creatures. She had gone out into the open to meet life and deal with it in her own way; she had brought new life i

had become a definite person already. Young though he was, he already knew the taste of rabbit's flesh, and would growl masterfully at his own mother if she claimed his attention-say, for a washing-when he had stolen one of her

to fill the place of the much-discussed attribute we call filial instinct in the young of human kind, the black-and-gray pup conceived the greatest admiration for his father. But it was little he recked of fatherhood and he always vigorously challenged Finn's entry to the cave, w

n full-fed himself would ruthlessly scratch and tug at his mother's aching flanks from sheer boisterous wantonness. At such times he would climb about her hollow sides, holding on by his sharp claws, and scratch and chew her huge pendulous ears, rarely meeting with any more serious check or rebuke than a low, rumbling hint of a maternal growl, which, as a matter of fact, a

re, and was sleeping soundly, while his sister lay somewhat nearer the opening of the cave. Had the weather been less warm, the black-and-gray pup would have used his sister as a pillow, a blanket, or a mattress, and in that case the adventure might

ged. She had long since learned of Reynard's end, of course, and, indeed, had seen his corpse within twenty-four hours of the execution. Though frequently moved by curiosity, she had never before ventured so near to the cave and wou

ell. The vixen promptly broke its neck with one snap of her powerful jaws and dragged the little creature out into the sunshine. All this time Master Black-and-Gray had been growling fiercely-his entire small body quivering under the strain of producing this mar

in his veins. His wrath was tremendous, overwhelming, in fact, and, but for the support of the cave's wall, would certainly have been too much for his still uncertain sense of balance. Suddenly now his ancestry spoke in this undeveloped creature. Determination took and shook him, and spurred him forwar

her footing, and went slithering down the dry grass from the ledge, snapping at the air as she slid, with bites, any one of which would easily have closed Black-and-Gray's career if they had reached him. But the puppy was quite powerless to put on the brake, so to say, and his progress down the slope was therefore far more rapid than that of the vixen. Th

rom her jaws. In the second place, Finn appeared, climbing from the landward side, in the gap beside which the puppy came to the end of its long tumbling flight. Midway between the gap and the cave, the

her for flight along the side of the slope she doubtless regretted bitterly t

hat of any fox in Sussex. The vixen was still well within sight from Desdemona's cave when her time came. She leaped and snapped, and faced overwhelming odds

longside him and introduced another new experience into this adventurous puppy's life. The pony must have appeared to his gaze very much as an elephant would appear to a child upon first v

d hitherto been confined to Finn and Desdemona and his own brothers and sisters-now defunct-found himself, at the close of this most adventurous afternoon, the center of an admiring, wondering circle formed by his mother and her wolfhound mate, and the pony and Betty Murdoch. Having regarded each one among