The furrier who wrote to Willis offered to send him a box of those pills
for seventy-five cents. We talked it over and agreed to try it, and
Addison and I contributed the money.
A few days later Willis received the pills and proceeded to lay them out
after a plan of his own. He cut several tallow candles into pieces about
an inch long, and embedded a pill in each. When he had prepared twenty
or more of those pieces of poisoned tallow, he put them in what he
called a fox bed, of oat chaff, behind that old barn. The bed was about
as large as the floor of a small room. At that time of year farmers were
killing poultry, and Willis collected a basketful of chickens' and
turkeys' heads to put into the bed along with the pieces of tallow. He
thought that the foxes would smell the heads and dig the bed over.
We had said nothing to any one about it. The old Squire was away from
home; but we knew pretty well that he would not approve of that method
of getting foxes. Indeed, he had little sympathy with the use of traps.
Willis was the only one who looked after the bed, or, indeed, who went
up to the clearing at all.
During the next three or four weeks Willis gathered in not less than ten
pelts, I think.
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