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.

What the reason is, I do not know, unless some fox that has been trapped and that has escaped passes the word round among all the other foxes.