From the same white page one may read many other stories of Reynard’s ways and doings.  Indeed I know of no more interesting winter walk than an afternoon spent on his last night’s trail through the soft snow.  There is always something new, either in the track or the woods through which it leads; always a fresh hunting story; always a disappointment or two, a long cold wait for a rabbit that didn’t come, or a miscalculation over the length of the snow tunnel where a partridge burrowed for the night.  Generally, if you follow far enough, there is also a story of good hunting which leaves you wavering between congratulation over a successful stalk after nights of hungry, patient wandering, and pity for the little tragedy told so vividly by converging trails, a few red drops in the snow, a bit of fur blown about by the wind, or a feather clinging listlessly to the underbrush.  In such a tramp one learns much of fox-ways and other ways that can never be learned elsewhere.

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The fox whose life has been spent on the hillsides surrounding a New England village seems to have profited by generations of experience.  He is much more cunning every way than the fox of the wilderness.  If, for instance, a fox has been stealing your chickens, your trap must be very cunningly set if you are to catch him.  It will not do to set it near the chickens; no inducement will be great enough to bring him within yards of it.  It must be set well back in the woods, near one of his regular hunting grounds.  Before that, however, you must bait the fox with choice bits scattered over a pile of dry leaves or chaff, sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month, till he comes regularly.  Then smoke your trap, or scent it; handle it only with gloves; set it in the chaff; scatter bait as usual; and you have one chance of getting him, while he has still a dozen of getting away.  In the wilderness, on the other hand, he may be caught with half the precaution.  I know a little fellow, whose home is far back from the settlements, who catches five or six foxes every winter by ordinary wire snares set in the rabbit paths, where foxes love to hunt.

In the wilderness one often finds tracks in the snow, telling how a fox tried to catch a partridge and only succeeded in frightening it into a tree.  After watching a while hungrily,—­one can almost see him licking his chops under the tree,—­he trots off to other hunting grounds.  If he were an educated fox he would know better than that.

When an old New England fox in some of his nightly prowlings discovers a flock of chickens roosting in the orchard, he generally gets one or two.  His plan is to come by moonlight, or else just at dusk, and, running about under the tree, bark sharply to attract the chickens’ attention.  If near the house, he does this by jumping, lest the dog or the farmer hear his barking.  Once they have begun to flutter and cackle, as they always do when disturbed, he begins to circle the tree slowly, still jumping and clacking his teeth.  The chickens crane their necks down to follow him.  Faster and faster he goes, racing in small circles, till some foolish fowl grows dizzy with twisting her head, or loses her balance and tumbles down, only to be snapped up and carried off across his shoulders in a twinkling.