Hugh Priest's fox-tail

Hugh Priest’s fox-tail is a recurring object of comfort that becomes the channel for Leland Gaunt’s influence over Hugh. Its apparent voice recalls Hugh’s promise to act against Nettle Cobb, and Hugh obeys: he kills Raider, then, having momentarily forgotten the killing, races home in fear that someone has taken the fox-tail. The sequence makes the object’s power palpable while sharply contrasting Hugh’s dependence on it with his responsibility for what he does.

Appearance and Use

Hugh takes the fox-tail down from a shelf and savors its plush texture, which the narration describes as unlike any familiar material. He repeatedly strokes it, treating contact with it as a source of reassurance. Its importance is practical as well as emotional: when Hugh fears it has disappeared, the thought displaces the recent killing from his attention and becomes the immediate concern governing his actions.

The Fox-Tail’s Voice

The fox-tail speaks to Hugh in a voice he recognizes as Gaunt’s. In this dreamlike encounter, it reminds him that he promised to do something and that the promise must be fulfilled after he wakes. Hugh understands the instruction as a plan to play a trick on Nettle. The exchange makes the fox-tail more than a passive possession in the scene: it gives Gaunt’s direction the intimate authority of an object Hugh already handles and trusts.

The Message and Raider’s Death

After waking, Hugh writes down the message in his own schoolboy script before getting dressed, so that he will not forget it. He pins the note onto the corkscrew of his Swiss Army knife and returns to stroking Raider. Hugh then acts on the instruction, killing Nettle’s dog with the knife. The fox-tail’s role in the episode is therefore connected to a concrete consequence, not merely to a dream or an unreal conversation: Hugh carries the remembered directive into his waking life and commits an act he recognizes as his own.

Panic and Renewed Attachment

Immediately afterward, Hugh feels sickened by what he has done and recognizes that Raider was likely Nettle’s only friend. He wonders whether he had been in a trance, but an inner voice rejects that excuse: he knew what he was doing. Panic follows. Yet, while driving away, Hugh forgets the killing and becomes feverishly certain that someone entered his house and stole the fox-tail. The abrupt shift reveals how strongly the object commands his attention, even as his guilt and self-awareness remain present.

Hugh returns home at speed and searches the high shelf. At first, his hands find only bare wood; when he finally touches the fox-tail, a sense of peace and fulfillment replaces his terror. He brings it to the kitchen table and strokes it across his thighs for more than three hours. The ending brings the object’s two functions together: it has served as the means by which Gaunt’s instruction reaches Hugh, and it remains the comfort Hugh urgently seeks after carrying that instruction out. That comfort does not undo the killing or erase Hugh’s recognition of his responsibility.