"No, my dear, we shot it."
"How cruel!" cried Mrs. Wood.
"Yes, weren't we brutes?" said her husband; "but there was some excuse
for us, Hattie. The bears ruined our farms. This kind of hunting that
hunts and kills for the mere sake of slaughter is very different from
that. I'll tell you what I've no patience with, and that's with these
English folks that dress themselves up, and take fine horses and packs
of dogs, and tear over the country after one little fox or rabbit. Bah,
it's contemptible. Now if they were hunting cruel, man-eating tigers, or
animals that destroy property, it would be a different thing."
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXIV
THE RABBIT AND THE HEN
"You had foxes up in Maine, I suppose, Mr. Wood, hadn't you?" asked Mr.
Maxwell.
"Heaps of them. I always want to laugh when I think of our foxes, for
they were so cute. Never a fox did I catch in a trap, though I'd set
many a one. I'd take the carcass of some creature that had died, a
sheep, for instance, and put it in a field near the woods, and the foxes
would come and eat it. After they got accustomed to come and eat and no
harm befell them, they would be unsuspecting.
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