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Already Pemrose, with the glossy huddle of soft beaver in her arms, was stealing towards the tortured thing that groveled and cackled again upon three legs—the fourth stuck out straight.

“Now, Unie, now quick—jump in—hold it down over him, tight,” she gasped “Over his head!”

And while girlish pluck pinned the coat—and the stifled form under it—to earth, Andrew’s quick hand found the spring of the steel trap, shaped like a bear’s jaws, and pressed it.

A convulsion under the smothering coat! A scraping—tearing and ripping!

They jumped all three.

All four! The fox jumped, too.

He had a free try at the fence now. But he was weak. He fell back—licked his leg passionately and tried again.

He was over. Looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, he was limping between waving grasses across the strip of rank meadow that separated the snake-fence from the woods.

“Fair gude day to ye!” grunted Andrew. “But ye might say: ‘Bethankit’!”

The wild thing reached the wood-line, brush waving.

Suddenly, before the trees swallowed him—and the undergrowth—he half-halted, half-turned—shot a backward glance.