82 REYNARD THE FOX CHAP. XII

to proceed: from this sorrow I began to
meditate how I might undo my father’s false
and wicked conspiracies, who sought to bring
a base traitor and a slave into the throne
imperial. For I well perceived as long as he
held the treasure, there was a possibility of
deposing your Majesty, and this troubled my
thought exceedingly, so that I laboured how I
might find out where my father’s treasure was
hid, and to that end I watched and attended
night and day in the woods, in the bushes, and
in the open fields. Nay, in all places where-
soever my father laid his eyes, there was I ever
watching and attending. Now it happened on
a time, as I was laid down flat on the ground,
I saw my father come running out of a hole,
and as soon as he was come out, he gazed
round about him, to see if any discovered him.
Then seeing the coast clear, he stopped the
hole with sand, and made it so even, smooth,
and plain, that no curious eye could discern a
difference betwixt it and the other earth. And
where the print of his foot remained, that with
his tail he stroked over, and with his mouth so
smoothed, that no man might perceive it; and
indeed that and many other subtilties I learned
of him there at that instant, When he had