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At length worn out, and as it were all nuot up and ithin doors, leaving his dear fox lying near where she had fallen

He stayed indoors only two ain with a razor in his hand intending to cut his own throat, for he was out of his senses in this first paroxysone, at which he looked about for athat soarden being open he ran straight through it Now this door, which had been left ajar by Polly when she ran off, opened into a little courtyard where the foere shut in at night; the woodhouse and the privy also stood there On the far side of it froh when open to let a cart enter, and high enough to keep a ot into the yard he found his vixen leaping up at these doors, and ith terror, but as lively as ever he saw her in his life He ran up to her but she shrank away froht hold of her She bared her teeth at hiht up into his arms and took her so indoors Yet all the while he could scarce believe his eyes to see her living, and felt her all over very carefully to find if she had not some bones broken But no, he could find none Indeed it was soan to suspect the truth, which was that his vixen had practised a deception upon hi his loss in such heartrending ter death to run away directly she was able If it had not been that the yard gates were shut, which was a ot her liberty by that trick And that this was only a trick of hers to shaht it over Indeed it is an old and time-honoured trick of the fox It is in Aesop and a hundred other writers have confirhly had he been deceived by her, that at first he was asalive, as he had been with grief a little while before, thinking her dead