The next morning, however,
the solution of the mystery flashed into Addison's mind. As we were
dressing at five o'clock, he suddenly turned to me and exclaimed in a
queer voice:
"I know what killed those colts!"
"What?" I asked.
"That fox bed!"
For a whole minute we stood there, half dressed, looking at each other
in consternation. Without doubt, the blame for the loss of the colts was
on us. What the consequences might be we hardly dared to think.
"What shall we do?" I exclaimed.
Addison looked alarmed as he answered in a low tone, "Keep quiet--till
we think it over."
"We must tell the old Squire," I said.
"But there's Willis," Addison reminded me. "It was Willis who made the
bed, you know."
The old clearing was, as I have said, a great place for foxes; and the
preceding fall Addison and I, wishing to add to the fund we were
accumulating for our expenses when we should go away to college, had
entered into a kind of partnership with Willis Murch to do a little
trapping up there. Addison and I were little more than silent partners,
however; Willis actually tended the traps.
But there are years, as every trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox
into a steel trap by any amount of artfulness.
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