It was the same story of increase
everywhere. There were chubby little ground-hogs scudding on the trail.
There were cunning baby coons and opossums peeping from hollow logs and
trees. Young muskrats followed their parents across the lagoons.
If you could come upon a family of foxes that had not yet disbanded, and
see the young playing with a wild duck's carcass that their mother had
brought, and note the pride and satisfaction in her eyes as she lay
at one side guarding them, it would be a picture not to be forgotten.
Freckles never tired of studying the devotion of a fox mother to her
babies. To him, whose early life had been so embittered by continual
proof of neglect and cruelty in human parents toward their children, the
love of these furred and feathered folk of the Limberlost was even more
of a miracle than to the Bird Woman and the Angel.
The Angel liked the baby rabbits and squirrels. Earlier in the season,
when the young were yet very small, it so happened that at times
Freckles could give into her hands one of these little ones.
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