CHAPTER VI

FROM KILMANAGH TO KNOCKDANE

From Kilmanagh Hill the highlands stretch north and south mile after

mile, with here and there the grey head of a limestone crag protruding

through the heather. In the less rugged spots the peasants have

collected the stones and piled them up, so as to enclose a tiny

half-acre field with a wall as strong and high as a rampart; but for

the most part the country lies derelict in moor and bog--the home of

the curlew, plover and hill-fox. It is a weird land this, which in

rockbound loneliness looks out over the cultivated plain. From its

southern limits can be seen the sea, a pale streak in the distance;

and often all day long the Atlantic mists settle down and wrap the

hills in a chill pall until sunset, when the sun breaks out and the

moor glows beneath him like a wet pebble. But to-night the sun had

long since disappeared behind the cone of Galtymore, and the stars had

taken his place, until they in their turn were drowned by the January

moon which rose, polished with frost, above the highest of the eastern

tiers of mountains. The western slopes of Kilmanagh were still hidden

in deepest shadow, but on the east every bush and heather tuft was

visible, and the faces of the limestone boulders glistened with rime.

A shadow glided through the bushes, and sprang upon a rock. The

moonlight shone on the thick brush and ruddy pads which Knockdane knew

so well. But Knockdane was ten miles away over the moors. What brought

Redpad to Kilmanagh that winter's night? Two days before he had left

his home covert, and travelled after sunset across the open country to

the foot of these wild highlands which lie some four miles to the

south of Knockdane. He had travelled along leisurely, hunting as he

went, and sleeping under some rock or bush. He did not know why he

thus wandered through an unknown country. He only felt a desire which

he could not gratify--the desire which awakens earliest in the Fox

People--the desire of Love. No matter how keenly January frosts bite

or January sleet showers blow, they leave their native haunts, and

wander away to seek a mate. Perhaps some mysterious hereditary

instinct led Redpad to the hill, for on just such a night his sire had

left the highlands and come to Knockdane three years before.

To-night Redpad climbed to the highest peak of Kilmanagh Hill to see

the moon rise; and there, because he was solitary and the Love Desire

so strong, he raised his long muzzle and yelped out his loneliness

and longing. A sheep-dog below heard and answered with a deep

'row-row-row!' of disgust at the chain which prevented him rambling

from his home.

[Illustration: LONELINESS AND LONGING]

'Yap! yap! yap!' shrilly and insistently Redpad, silhouetted against

the moon, yelped a love song and challenge in one.

From the shadowed side of Kilmanagh rose a call less loud and defiant

than his own. Redpad swung round, ears cocked, pad raised, but the

still cold air of mid-January was silent but for the sheep-dog's bark.

He whimpered a little and then plunged into the heather. The hillside

was very dark, but Redpad's nose was keen and told him plainly who had

passed that way. Where the main peak of Kilmanagh meets the more

gradual slopes which rise up to meet it from the plain, is a little

ravine, and here the night air bore a faint unmistakable taint to his

nostrils--fox. Among the shadows ahead, his eyes, catlike, accustomed

to see in the gloom, detected something which appeared more solid than

a shadow. He approached it cautiously, while a low growl arose in his

throat. A pair of ears twitched and then slid into the bushes. Redpad

put his nose down and hunted out the trail as carefully as ever he had

done that of hare or rabbit. By and by he came to a clearing. The moon

had just risen above the sloping shoulders of Kilmanagh, and to fox

eyes the hill was light. Here his quest ended, for not six yards from

him sat the Beloved. Her coat was as red as that of a winter squirrel,

her brush was as thick as a pine sapling, and she was as desirable as

a sunny evening in May. Therefore because she satisfied Redpad's

longing he called her the Beloved on the spot, and indeed he never

knew her by any other name. He came forward cautiously, for he doubted

what his reception might be, leaping this way and that and dropping on

his forepads like a cub inviting a game. But the Beloved had also been

very solitary. She too had yelped the story of her loneliness to the

moon. She trotted forward and touched Redpad caressingly, and then

playfully rolled him over with her muzzle. They romped together for a

few minutes, and either gave and received sundry love nips, and then

they trotted down the hill in company.

The sheep-dog was silent, but a snipe rushed up crying 'kek-a-kek.'

Rabbits were playing among the furze, and there Redpad and his Beloved

hunted together until the moon began to sink, and some wet clouds from

the west rose over her face, bringing warm rain.

* * * * *

It still wanted some two hours till dawn when Redpad and his love

came back up the hill, full-fed and contented. The Beloved trotted in

front, and her mate followed some little way behind. Suddenly the

narrow goat-path took a sharp turn, and they came full upon an

enormous fox. He stood half an inch higher at the shoulder than

Redpad, and his coat was as grey as a badger's. He bared his teeth a

little at the sight of Redpad, but most of his attention was

concentrated upon the Beloved. He crept forward with his long neck

stretched out and touched her red shoulder. Redpad bared his double

row of ivory fangs and the hair along his spine rose. In another

moment he would have flown at his rival's throat, had not the Beloved,

as is the custom of the fox-kind, taken the quarrel upon herself. She

flew at the Grey One with a fierce growl, and made her teeth meet in

his flank. He would have fought with Redpad while he had a pad left to

stand upon, but by the law of the Woods a fox may not attack a vixen

in the love season. He felt the Beloved's strong jaws close like a

trap behind his ears, and fled. The vixen trotted back slowly to her

lair, glancing back now and then over her shoulder and growling softly

at the recollection of her recent skirmish and many other things. And

Redpad, her accepted suitor, followed.

* * * * *

The afternoon was dull and raw. The frost had gone, and the fields in

the plain were studded with pools of flood water, for much rain had

fallen.

Redpad in his lair was awakened by a frightened woodcock which dropped

down just in front of him. He sat up suspiciously with cocked ears,

for it is not the way of woodcock after a clear night to shift their

quarters undisturbed. There was a faint halloa at the top of the hill:

'Try-Tra-i-y.' Redpad slipped silently from the warm lair, and the

Beloved followed him, for they both knew the meaning of that sound.

Suddenly there was a joyous 'yow-yow-yow.' 'Hike! hike!' came the

shout again; and Redpad trotted down the hill, for although the

heather hemmed him in, he knew well enough what was forward on the

summit.

There is a low stone wall at the foot of Kilmanagh which separates a

thick gorse brake from the fields, and Redpad squatted down behind it

to watch. The hounds were gradually working down the hill. There was a

man on a horse standing at a corner of the field, and all at once he

waved his cap above his head. The Grey One was slinking down the

fence. He had crossed the first field when a couple of hounds gave

tongue close by. His heart failed him--he swung round to the covert

again, leaped over Redpad with a snarl, and galloped back up the

hill. The hounds broke into the field on his line, wheeled like a

flock of plover, and came straight to where Redpad lay. It was time to

be stirring--a strange covert is no refuge to a hunted fox. Redpad

cantered gracefully a little further up the fence, and just as he

leaped upon the wall in full view of the watcher in the field, some

erratic puff of wind told him that his Beloved had just passed that

way up the hill to safety. He wavered for a moment, then the pack

spoke again and he leaped. But he had not gone a hundred yards before

the hounds gave tongue behind him, and a distant voice proclaimed:

'Gone away--awa-a-y--awa-a-y!'

From the very start Redpad knew where he was going, and set his mask

towards Knockdane on the hill ten miles away. At first the fields he

crossed were small, and cropped as bare as a billiard-table by

starveling goats and sheep, while between them rose walls of loosely

piled stone, five feet high and so broad that a horse could walk along

the top. More than one horseman turned home that day with a red

bandage round his horse's fetlock, for Kilmanagh stones are sharp.

Two miles slipped by. Redpad kept up his best pace, for he felt

instinctively that he had not increased his lead during the last

half-mile, and the scent was good that day. He was in the best of

condition and ran strongly, but he did not know the hiding-places in

this part of the country as well as those of Knockdane, and was

obliged to trust more to his legs and less to his wits than was his

custom.

Presently he turned to the right and climbed the steep hillside to the

moor. There was a big rabbit hole in his path into which he tried to

creep, but just below the surface it narrowed, and he was obliged to

back out with his coat full of dust and several precious moments lost.

He could see the hounds--a pied patch on the fields below him. At that

distance they appeared to be crawling along, but as a matter of fact

they were racing at top speed. Just behind them rode a horseman on a

great black horse, but the rest were further behind.

Redpad ran on steadily, for he could see Knockdane with its crest of

trees in the distance. The moor was boggy, and he crossed patches of

quagmire which trembled even under his light weight. A big grey heron

burst out of a pool and swung skywards, and the snipe sprang up in

every direction; but Redpad never paused and the hounds never checked,

until the men began to wonder if their horses would hold out, and took

what short cuts they might.

Three miles further on the moor sloped down to the tilled lands again.

Redpad was cantering along a bohireen[3] when he suddenly came full

upon a countryman mending a wall. The man sprang up and shouted, and a

big yellow sheep-dog darted from his heel. Redpad cleared the fence at

a bound, and went away over a turnip-field with the collie not half a

dozen yards behind. The field was a wide one, and although he

succeeded in shaking off his pursuer on the other side, yet the sudden

effort told upon him. His tongue was out, and now and then his gallop

dropped into a hurrying trot.

[3] Narrow lane.

By now he was in fields which he knew well, and tried all the familiar

hiding-places one after another. There is a 'shore' by Kilmacabee and

a badger set in Charlesfort Wood; but the rain had filled the former

with water, and the latter was blocked up.

The early January evening began to close in when the home covert was

still three miles away, but the scent lay stronger than ever on field

and bog. Redpad was spattered with mud and his breath came in gasps,

but he ran on gallantly over ploughed fields where the plover rose

screaming at his approach, and over pastures where the sheep

stampeded. Once he met a donkey-cart crawling down a road. The old

woman in it screamed and waved her shawl at his approach, and obliged

him to turn a hundred yards out of his way, but even a hundred yards

is far to go when limbs are weary, and there is withal the certain

knowledge that the pursuers are gaining ground. Nevertheless he could

see Knockdane more and more clearly, and knew that there was only

another half-mile, and the river to be forded, before he could lie

down in the old 'earth.' Looking back he saw that the hounds, though

tired themselves, were coming on faster than ever, and he knew that he

must run his best if he would arrive at the ford by the old willow

before them. His heart thudded as though it would burst its way

through his ears, and his famous ruddy pads felt as though each were

bound to the earth. More than once he lay down with closed eyes, and

had he been a soft-hearted fox or a vixen he would have died there and

then; but as he was as gallant a fox as ever ran before the hounds to

a ten mile point, he rose stiffly and stumbled aimlessly forward

again.

As he crossed the brow of the hill from whence the slope fell steeply

down to the river, the sun came out over the shoulder of Knockdane and

shone wanly on the flood pools in the meadows. The mists were already

rising, and the great solemn woods on the other side lay in shadow.

The waterhens feeding on the river bank scuttled away as he limped

down to the water's edge.

The river was in full flood and rushed hurrahing seawards, carrying

foam flakes and branches of trees in its coffee-coloured current. It

filled its banks to the brim, and not a ripple was left to tell where

the ford had been. The willow tree which grew beside the spot was

partially uprooted and drooped into the water with its branches

festooned with flotsam. Redpad paused bewildered, for never before had

this ford failed him at his need. Just then the hounds broke over the

brow of the hill and tore down the slope. Redpad saw them, and

determined to make a desperate bid for freedom. Very slowly and

stiffly he crept out along the horizontal trunk of the willow, and so

into the smaller branches above the water, where a hound could not

venture. The pack came up and crowded baying round the tree. Now and

then one tried to follow along the trunk, but they were less nimble

than a fox and slipped back into the water. Redpad lay crouched flat

with his teeth bared, and no hound could reach him from below.

Presently two men rode down and dismounted from their tired horses.

One was the man on the black horse who had ridden so well that day,

and the other was the huntsman. The latter tried to climb out along

the tree to Redpad, but it swayed so perilously that he was forced to

return.

'It's no use, sir,' he said. 'I am afraid we can't reach him there.

Shure, it's a pity for the hounds not to chop him afther all, afther

the way they hunted him.'

'It was as fine a hunt as ever I saw,' answered the other. Then

looking at Redpad's half-closed eyes, he added: 'But that fellow will

never run again--he is dead beat, and it is a pity they did not run

into the poor brute back yonder where he lay down. At all events he

has cheated us of his brush, for he was as plucky a fox as I ever

saw.'

With this, his requiem, in his ears, Redpad stretched out his muzzle

on his pads and closed his eyes, as he had done many a morning in the

old earth in Knockdane. The light of the after-glow lit up the bright

coats of the two men and the tired hounds behind. They were only a few

yards away, yet he knew that they could not reach him, and therefore

paid no further attention to them. The water lip-lapped round the

willow, and the roar of the flood deepened as twilight fell, and the

night wind shivered in the aspens. A waterhen called, and a flight of

wild duck, quacking softly, flew over the hill. Redpad straightened

himself slowly--then he gave a lurch, and dropped into the water. The

broad stream caught him, and swept him out into the midcurrent. He

struggled a little, but the eddies bound down each tired limb, and the

ripples broke against his closed eyes. The water, which had so nearly

cut short his life in early days, was a good friend to him now. As his

body was borne down the misty stream, away from the clamour of the

hounds into the august silences of the night, the waves lapped gently

over his head; and under their kisses, his spirit drifted quietly out

to the Grey Fields of Sleep where the souls of the Fur Folk go.

There is no rain known there nor any sun, and no one is ever weary or

hungry or afraid, but they lie wrapped in warm mists in a country

where there is no noise nor bright light burning. They sleep on there

and take their rest, knowing neither joy nor grief nor hope nor

disappointment until time and space shall be no more.

The moon rose over the mountains, and the flood sang joyfully on its

way to the tumbling waves in the estuary.

THE STORY OF FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBIT

[Illustration: FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBIT]

CHAPTER I

HOW FLUFF-BUTTON CRIED QUITS

A lane winds steeply through Knockdane Wood; and at the top of the

hill where the trees grow sparsely, there is a gate leading to a

furze-grown field. The grass is cropped short and thick by generations

of sheep and rabbits; and the slopes are dotted with gorse bushes

which they have nibbled into all kinds of fantastic shapes. Between

the wood and the field the gorse forms a prickly barrier six feet

high, but it tapers off to mere pin-cushions of eighteen inches in the

open. The first time that White-Lamb saw the bushes, he stubbed his

nose into them, and then cried out because the thorns pricked.

White-Lamb had only lived two days of his allotted span, and had not

yet learned that gorse is prickly.

There were a score of sheep in the field, and each of them had her

white lamb (or maybe two) running beside her; but only one White-Lamb

comes into this story, because he was the only one who had anything to

do with the course of events in Knockdane Wood, and even his influence

was only indirect through Fluff-Button the Rabbit. Fluff-Button was a

great hero in Knockdane, as any of the Fur Folk can tell you; but he

would never have grown up at all if it had not been for White-Lamb, as

this story will relate.

In the year of which I write, March and April changed places; for

although the human calendars said that it was March, and in the woods

the catkins had not shrivelled on the hazels, yet all day the westerly

wind drove rain-storms over Knockdane. The lambs huddled close to

their mothers with nothing but their restless tails appearing,

when--hey presto--no sooner had they tucked themselves away

comfortably, than the squall passed, and the sun blazed out upon the

wet skirts of the rain. Raindrops dripped merrily from the

hazel-catkins as the wind or a leaping squirrel shook them, and the

air was full of the scent of wet earth and breaking buds.

Towards evening the showers became less frequent, and the sun shot

long slanting rays over Knockdane. The old sheep coughed as they

snatched at the wet grass, and the field resounded with the incessant

bleating of the lambs who ran to a strange ewe and were butted aside.

Because White-Lamb still kept his close lamb's coat, and had not yet

lost the instincts of his race in the placid vegetable life of his

mother, he grew restless towards nightfall, and trotted over to the

gate to look at the woods--an unknown land to him. The Night Longing

calls to the animals who live under man's dominion as surely as to the

Wild Folk, but they very seldom hear it. Sometimes, however, the

sleepy cattle in the meadows lose their wits in the dark; and if a man

passes by they forget that he is their lord and master, who in the

daytime goads them where he will, and only remember that at one time

their forefathers charged his naked ancestors through the forest, and

gored and trampled upon them. The old impulses are strongest in the

young animals, just as among men a boy burns with a hundred noble

purposes which he will forget when he becomes a man, and soils his

hands in the world's ways.

The path wound away until it was lost to view among the fir trees; but

right at the end of the vista, and barred across perpendicularly by

the tall stems, was a clearing into which the sunset light slanted. As

White-Lamb watched the light on the path, and listened to the wind

among the branches, he saw a shadow move among the withered fern

stumps, and steal quickly towards him. White-Lamb watched it approach

with his pink-tinted ears spread wide, and his innocent face pressed

against the lower bar of the gate. At first he thought that the

strange beast was a sheep, but a furtive gleam of sunshine touched its

back and pointed ears and turned them ruddy. It came on with an easy

silent gait, glancing from side to side, and did not perceive

White-Lamb until it was quite close to him. Then it stopped, and eyed

him narrowly with a pair of keen yellow eyes. White-Lamb felt a vague

misgiving, and ran back a few steps towards the flock. The other slunk

forward and slipped through a little hole at the side of the

gate-post, whence his sharp nose peeped out. A dozen rabbits were

playing a little distance down the fence, close to the sheep, and his

attention was fixed upon these. Suddenly White-Lamb realised that all

was not to his liking, and he uttered a loud and plaintive bleat.

Instantly his mother raised her head, saw the intruder, and cried to

her companions. The whole flock rushed together, each ewe with her

lamb galloping beside her; and forming into a close circle they faced

the enemy and stamped an insistent warning: 'Fox! fox!' The rabbits

took the alarm at once, without pausing to discover the reason for the

stampede. A dozen scuts whisked in the air, and then vanished into the

hedgerow. There was, however, one small rabbit who had evidently but

just left the nesting burrow, for he showed no fear. He hopped a few

feet nearer the hedge, and then raised himself upon his fluffy pad of

a tail to peer over the grass.

The fox saw his ears twitch, and glided forward a few feet before

making a spring. But the old ewes took the alarm again, and stampeded.

As White-Lamb scampered by his mother, his flying hoof struck the

little rabbit, and brushed him aside. The flock then wheeled again

upon the fox, just in time to see the rabbit's scut uppermost as he

rolled head over heels into the runway, and hear the click of the

fox's jaws which closed on the empty air at the end of his spring. He

stood sulkily watching the sheep for a minute or two; but though he

did not fear them individually, yet collectively the old ewes looked

dangerously ready to trample upon an enemy in defence of their lambs,

and he thought better of it. He turned away and cantered off towards

the moor.

That was the first time that White-Lamb saw Fluff-Button the Rabbit,

and but for his happy instinct to baa for his mother, it would have

been the last. However, as it was, they often saw one another again,

for Old Doe Rabbit had tunnelled her nesting burrow under a fir tree

inside the wood, and used to lead her family out to feed in the

evening. At first there were six of them, but as March turned into

April, and White-Lamb's body grew to proportions more in keeping with

his legs, foxes, cats and stoats took their toll, and their numbers

diminished to three. After a time they achieved a certain

independence. They crept out alone, and sat among the bluebells and

combed their ears and pretended to be grown-up rabbits, until a pigeon

clattering out of the fir trees or a magpie croaking in glee over a

throstle's nest, made them tumble inside to their mother in a hurry. A

mere human hunter would have said that there was absolutely no

difference between Fluff-Button and his sisters, but he would have

been wrong. Fluff-Button was no more like them than all the children

in a human family are like one another, but only another rabbit could

have seen the difference. They all had the same white dab of a tail,

and the same ever-twitching whiskers, and they all had to go through

the same training. All knowledge in the woods is divided into two

kinds: those things which you are born knowing, and those things which

you find out for yourself. Fluff-Button was born knowing that grass

was good to eat, but he had to find out for himself that the bluebell

leaves, which look much like grass, are full of unwholesome slimy

juice and not nice to nibble. He also had to find out by experience

that while foxes are dangerous and should be avoided, sheep are quite

harmless. When he had learned this, he used often to find his way to

the Sheep Field all alone, and feed among the lambs.

Once a day Paddy Magragh used to climb the hill to count the sheep. At

his heels slunk a yellow terrier with a keen nose and a silent tongue,

who could do anything from rounding up a sheep for his master, to

killing a fox single-handed in Knockdane. But for this early morning

visit, life in the Sheep Field was very peaceful. Nothing came between

the furze bushes and the spring sunshine except when a rook flew

overhead, croaking a quaint spring song to himself, or when a filmy

cloud raced across the sky. The gorse flowers gave out a heavy perfume

like warm apricot jam, and the fine spell brought out a horde of

insects to hum round them. The lambs played together among the

ant-hills, and the little rabbits played also. The games they played

were the oldest games in the world--tig, catch as catch can, and king

o' the castle. But though White-Lamb often saw Fluff-Button, and used

to run and sniff at his little brown ears in the grass, I cannot say

positively whether they ever talked to one another or no. I often lay

in the bushes and watched them feed side by side; but the language of

the Woods is not that of men. It is a more subtle, and yet a more

simple language, communicated by movements of the eyes, ears, and

whiskers, and no man has ever thoroughly learned it yet.

The night after the first bluebell had opened, Fluff-Button went all

alone to the Sheep Field at moonrise for the first time. He was now

three-parts grown, and instead of feeding by the hedgerow with one eye

on covert, he crept further and further out towards the middle of the

pasture like any old buck rabbit.

It was a chilly night; but the air on the hill was less cold than that

in the valley, where a damp mist lay. A sheep-dog yelped monotonously

at the end of his chain from a farmhouse beyond the wood; and at the

bottom of the field short grunts and incessant bleating told that the

sheep were feeding. The Sheep Field was always noisy at night. One or

another of the ewes would lose sight of her lamb behind a bush, and

then for a long while either cried to the other, and yet neither would

stir; and the wind everlastingly sang in the trees in Knockdane.

By and by a pale April moon rose, and Fluff-Button sat up for the

tenth time to flick the dew from his whiskers. The bushes around him

took curious shapes in the half-light; and wander where he would among

them, he saw no other rabbit. But suddenly his long ears sprang from

the horizontal to the vertical, and his forelegs stiffened. The turf

of the Sheep Field was firm and close, and carried the sound of

galloping hoofs like a telephone. The sheep were on the move.

Fluff-Button, used to their senseless panics, would have paid little

heed had not the night air brought another faint taint to his

nostrils. As it was, he hopped away slowly between two furze thickets.

Almost before he could tumble aside the sheep were upon him, ewe and

lamb jostling one another, while White-Lamb, who headed the stampede,

leaped the bushes like a chamois. They rushed into a dense phalanx,

and all stamped their fear and anger at something which was

approaching them between the gorse bushes. Fluff-Button skipped round,

and it was well that he did so, for there, not five yards away, stood

Magragh's yellow cur dog with his tongue lolling out, and his wicked

eyes on the sheep. The Night Longing had moved him and strange

impulses stirred within him. He had forgotten all about his quiet

domestic life, and his love for his master, and only listened to the

voice which whispered that it would be good to chase the silly, woolly

things in front of him--and leap upon them--and worry them. But for

the moment he stood hesitating, for all his life it had been his duty

to care for the sheep.

It was well for the sheep that they stood firm. Had they broken and

run, the scales, which were now evenly weighted, would have turned.

The dog would have dragged them down from the sheer lust of killing;

and after that night he would have developed into what every farmer

hates and fears--a sheep-killing dog. But a weight dropped into the

other scale, and that weight was Fluff-Button. He lay right in the

path, and his presence decided the matter. Cur Dog forgot those

strange impulses which bade him kill the sheep, and only remembered

that here was a rabbit which was lawful prey.

Fluff-Button doubled away nimbly from his rush, but even so the dog's

jaws snapped together just behind his scut. Away they went down the

field, the rabbit leading by a few bare yards. He had no time to

double back into the gorse, and here there was no covert but a few

bushes, therefore he headed for the wood.

Cur Dog had won many a Sunday's coursing, and had something of the

greyhound strain mingled with his terrier blood. He did not give

tongue, but ran silently with his nose to the ground. With his pursuer

so close behind, Fluff-Button dared not try any of those elaborate

dodges and twists which every rabbit knows, but he tore down the field

like an arrow. The slope was in Cur Dog's favour, for a rabbit never

runs his best downhill. He decreased his distance by a foot or two,

but he came no nearer, for Fluff-Button strained every sinew, and

buttoned down his ears and whiskers, that nothing might hinder him in

the race.

Thus they reached the fence, and Fluff-Button cunningly slipped

between two saplings, hoping that his enemy would dash into them in

the dark, but Cur Dog was fortunate, and came through unscratched.

Then began a long series of turns and twists among fern stumps and

trees. Several times Fluff-Button thought that he had shaken off his

pursuer, but every time a yelp from behind told him that the latter

was still hot on the line. In a long chase the odds are against the

rabbit. He is not accustomed to sustained efforts, and although only a

swift dog can catch him in a dash to the burrow's mouth, yet if hunted

far he soon tires. Fluff-Button longed for a bramble brake, but there

was none near. His heart thumped against his ribs until he felt as

though it must burst, for just then Cur Dog gave tongue loudly and

long, with the confidence of a hunter who knows that his quarry is

weary.

Fluff-Button turned down a ride. The moon had risen, and here where

the trees grew sparsely it was comparatively light. Nevertheless the

woods on either side were in deepest shadow, and Fluff-Button had eyes

for nothing but the dog behind him. Hence he never saw a dark figure

standing in the shadows, and he passed so swiftly that he scented

nothing unusual. Neither did Cur Dog see or smell it as he tore down

the ride, yelping on the trail with his nose to the ground.

Suddenly there was a flash--and a loud report split the silence of the

woods. Cur Dog bounded his own height into the air, his howl died into

a sob--he rolled over twice and then lay still.

'Not bad in the twilight,' said the keeper, jerking the cartridge from

his gun.

Fluff-Button heard the report as he scudded through the bushes, but he

never noticed that the galloping feet behind him had ceased. Some

fifty yards further on was an old rabbit burrow. He dived into it, and

lay panting in its bottommost recess until long after moonset. But no

Cur Dog came to nose at the burrow's mouth.

Thus Fluff-Button might have cried quits with White-Lamb for the time

that the latter summoned the flock to face the fox. But though the

next evening found them together in the Sheep Field, yet they fed

placidly side by side and exchanged no word nor sign; for it is not

the way of the Wild Folk to show gratitude to one another.

CHAPTER II

THE SPRING LONGING

In the valley at the foot of Knockdane Hill there is a great meadow.

It is like an island surrounded by the sea, for the woods come close

up to its hedge on all sides except on the east, where the river runs;

and just as an island may have a lake in the middle, so in the centre

of the Big Meadow there is a little copse. The trees in the copse are

sycamore and red-stemmed pine, and in spring the ground is carpeted

with celandines and anemones. In the copse there is a hollow where

long ago men used to quarry out stones; but now it is never used, and

the heaps of flints are draped with bramble and cinquefoil trails.

When the men ceased to dig out gravel and gave the copse back to the

Fur Folk, an old rabbit made his burrow under the roots of a pine

tree, and he or his descendants lived there ever after. At the time of

which I write, however, the woods had been rigorously trapped during

the winter, and one by one the inhabitants of the Copse Burrow had

disappeared until there were only two doe rabbits left. One was Mutch,

a veteran of four seasons, with long yellow teeth and a grey coat,

well versed in the wiles of the woods; and the other was Cuni, who

had only been born the previous July, and who had fur as brown as her

big soft eye.

From a human point of view a celandine bed is the most beautiful

thing. It covered the copse with a broad sheet, softly green and

golden, and the first things the rabbits saw when creeping from

subterranean darkness were the golden flowers. Nevertheless, from the

rabbit's point of view celandines are not so desirable. They are just

the wrong height, and tickle the bunnies' noses as they hop through

them; and besides, the broad leaves catch and retain raindrops, which

is a grievous disadvantage when soaked and muddy paws have to be

licked dry. At least that is what Cuni found. She came out when the

flowers were all asleep after the rain, and the dawn was breaking over

the mountains. The wind was keen and fresh, and bore the strong sweet

scent of wet earth with it. The pine trees swayed and sighed--not with

the boisterous roar with which they struggled with the autumn gales,

but triumphantly, as though the sap were mounting to their topmost

twigs. The light in the east grew primrose-coloured behind the

wind-torn clouds, and beyond the river the rooks in the Ballylinch

elms awoke and clamoured for the sun.

As the gale swept along, the woods were filled with a spirit which,

although it is as old as the world itself, is yet born anew every

year--the mad spirit of Spring.

Even old Mutch felt that the season was changing. As for Cuni, she

leaped three feet into the air, and tried to play at hide and seek

with herself round an ash tree; but Mutch, who was old and surly,

chased her into a bramble bush. It is a curious thing that, just as in

human society some old spinsters ape masculine dress and ways, and

prate much about the Rights of Women, because, poor dears, they do not

know what those rights really are; so in the woods old doe rabbits or

old hen birds often gradually adopt the colours and language of the

other sex. Therefore Mutch coughed in a deep voice and gobbled grass

untidily like any old buck rabbit, but Cuni fed daintily and watched

the stormy sunrise.

Presently she heard a rustle in the celandines, and sniffed cautiously

to discover whether that which was coming were harmless rabbit,

slinking stoat, or prowling cat. Suddenly there was a crisp, short

thump which made the Copse ring: it was a signal. The old doe rose on

her hind legs and listened; but Cuni peeped through the brambles to

see from where the noise came.

Fluff-Button sat and kicked the ground loudly and persistently. He did

not know _why_ he did so any more than the celandines around his paws

knew why they waved in the wind; but Fluff-Button knew _when_ he did

so and the flowers did not--there lay the difference. He was calling

for his love, and as though fascinated Cuni's tremulous nose was

thrust from covert, and she began to steal towards him. But as she was

about to stamp an answer, she looked to the right and saw that old

Mutch had hopped half-way across the clearing.

Fluff-Button turned round and saw two pairs of ears twitch. One pair

was grey and lopped with age, but the second pair was adorable, and he

made up his mind quickly. He hopped towards Cuni, utterly disregarding

Mutch, and rose on his haunches to display his white vest and long

whiskers. Cuni was visibly impressed by these, and by the beauty of

his fine scut. When he tried to caress her she did not turn away, but

suffered him to nuzzle at her furry shoulder, while she gave him

delicate tickling kisses with her whiskers. After that Fluff-Button

knew that his cause was won.

By now the sun was up, and the celandine calices expanded into perfect

golden stars. The Spring Longing bade Fluff-Button leave the Copse and

spend the day in the main wood, and Cuni went with him. They crossed

the field, and entered a clearing where the low briars were draped

with dry grass. The rabbits crept inside a tuft and hollowed it out

into a neat round chamber. Fluff-Button obliterated the door with two

deft touches, and then they settled down side by side. No hawk had

eyes keen enough to detect them from above, and any foe on legs might

have passed within a yard and never have seen them. But there are

other ways of hunting than by sight.

* * * * *

Crash! It was noon. The rabbits, dozing contentedly in their form,

awoke. Fluff-Button's ears moved the fraction of an inch, and then he

squatted down with his eye glued to a peep-hole. Some heavy animal was

forcing its way through the briars, but that did not frighten the

rabbits so much as did a more distant sound: 'yow, yow, yowl.' 'Good

dog!' said a voice just above their heads. Suddenly something rustled

beside the form. The grass curtains were violently torn aside, and a

huge grey rabbit head was thrust in. It was old Mutch. As she burst

into the form her eyes glinted white as she glanced backwards. She

thrust Cuni violently aside, and squatted down panting in her place,

while Fluff-Button lay as still as death with his ears flattened and

his paws bunched together. Cuni, terrified, forgot that primary rule

of 'lie still,' in keeping of which rabbit safety lies, and ran a few

steps. The man, standing knee-deep in briars, saw the grass stir.

'Here! good dog!' he called; and motioned with his hand. There was a

rush, a wild scuffle, and Cuni bolted down the hedge. It was well for

her that the dog started in pursuit, otherwise the gun would have

cracked before she had gone a dozen yards; but as it was the man dared

not fire for fear of hitting his dog, and when he did so the shot

merely buried itself harmlessly two feet in front of Cuni's nose.

Now began a long chase. The dog was young and headstrong, and the

temptation to chase the rabbit was too much for him; but afterwards he

wished that he had obeyed his master's whistle and left her alone. For

first of all Cuni led him through laurels against which he stubbed his

nose at every turn; and then she took him through some brambles where

he tore his ears; and last of all she raced for the Lower Wood. Here

she increased her lead a little, and then, looping back upon her

trail, she ran under a fallen fir tree, and went to ground thirty

yards further on. The dog went down the blind lead first, then had to

turn back along the true one to the fir tree. It took three minutes

for him to convince himself that his game was gone, and then he

returned, panting, to an interview with his irate master, after which

he was a sadder and wiser dog.

Cuni could not stay long underground when the Spring Longing was

abroad in the wood, and two hours afterwards she crept out again. Her

instinct led her back to the bramble patch, but, alas, the form was

cold and empty. A jay squawked overhead and warned her not to linger.

The jay is a most untrustworthy watchman and gives a false alarm

twenty times a day; but the Wood Folk know that if by any chance an

enemy should pass by, the jay will surely see it, therefore they

always obey his warning. On this occasion the enemy turned out to be a

stoat, and Cuni fled quaking lest it should be on her trail. Not until

she was far away did she feel safe to continue her search. Once she

ventured to signal timidly, but the only answer she received was from

a doe rabbit, who, when she found that it was one of her own sex who

had stamped, looked much as one girl in a ballroom might do if another

invited her to stand up and dance.

At last Cuni came upon a trail. It was cold and stale, but

unmistakably rabbity, and the Spring Longing bade her follow it. It

led her through devious ways across the Big Meadow into the Celandine

Copse, and thither Cuni followed it through an archway under a

bramble. The wind had dropped and the Copse was silent but for the

spring chirp of an oxeye. Under the trees the scent was stronger but

strangely irregular, as though a second and feebler trail were mingled

with the first. Cuni followed it into the gravel pit, expecting a

signal, but none came. She slid down a heap of tinkling shale, and her

nose led her to the old cart road on the other side, where the grass

was tender and beloved by the rabbits.

Cuni could guess well enough what had happened here, for the trails

were like a double string of beads--a narrow thread where the rabbits

had hopped straight forward, and here and there an expansion where one

or other had turned aside to graze.

Suddenly Cuni turned a corner and came full upon Fluff-Button, who was

sitting with his back turned to her; while just in front of him

stood--Mutch. Fluff-Button was feeding in a nervous, jerky manner, and

when presently Mutch crept up to him and touched him pleadingly, he

only hopped away petulantly.

Mutch, repulsed, sat up and looked round--to see Cuni. Whether the

sight awoke in her the old mother instinct of the woods to drive away

a young one able to fend for itself, or whether it was simply

jealousy, I cannot say, for the Spring Longing works strange changes

in the beasts; but, anyhow, she rushed straight at Cuni and ripped a

tuft of fur from her flank. Cuni staggered, but Mutch was no longer

young enough to wheel and pursue her advantage quickly, and before she

could renew her attack, the little rabbit, spurred by the pain and

fear of the old bully, whisked past Fluff-Button into the bushes.

Mutch hopped back, full of pride at her achievement, and sought to

caress Fluff-Button with her whiskers. But her jealousy had

over-reached itself. Fluff-Button had wandered all the way from the

Wood to the Copse seeking something which had gone from him; and

although Mutch had followed him all the way with caresses he had

rejected her, for she did not satisfy the longing which possessed him.

However, when he saw Cuni's little white scut scurry by, his instinct

told him that this was what he sought. He pushed past Mutch

unceremoniously, and leaving her behind to stamp impotent signals, he

scampered after Cuni.

He found her for the second time crouching among the celandines; and

this time he did not delay, but claimed her at once. Neither did Cuni

play any more love games, but just nestled against him happily.

Could there have been found a fairer Eden than that Copse, and could

Adam and Eve in their innocence have been happier than were

Fluff-Button and Cuni? Even the All-Father in Whom the woods live

cannot make happiness more than perfect, and for a little while these

two were perfectly happy, for the Spring desire was satisfied.

If there were a tragedy in the Woods that day, perhaps it was that of

old Mutch, who came upon the pair too late, for it was the first time

that she had failed to win a partner for the summer, and she was

bitterly jealous. However, grief and joy, and even life itself, are

very transitory among the Wild Folk, and before the early evening

closed in Mutch was grazing peacefully in the Meadow.

And there, when the celandines shut, Fluff-Button and his beloved

followed her to see the moon rise; and the wind sang among the

swelling buds of the warm summer days to be.

CHAPTER III

THE INVASION OF GARRY'S HILL

Fluff-Button and Cuni re-opened the big burrow at the top of Garry's

Hill. Garry's Hill is a big grassy mound just outside Knockdane, with

one stunted hawthorn growing on the top. Long ago many rabbits had

lived here, but a mysterious epidemic had swept them all away, and the

grass grew thickly over the entrance to the holes. Fluff-Button lay

out in the woods all day and worked at the burrow at night. Cuni was

never very far away from him at this time, and often made her form

close to his; but she never allowed him to touch her or follow her

about.

By and by she dug out another tunnel further down the field, and took

particular pains that her mate should not find out its existence. For

more than a month she lived apart, and he only saw her occasionally;

but one fine day she returned to the burrow with six fluffy atoms

hopping after her. At first Fluff-Button was disposed to resent their

intrusion on his privacy, but Cuni discreetly kept her family away

from his own particular dormitory, and led them out to feed at a

respectful distance.

The six youngsters throve, for Garry's Hill was so exposed on all

sides that if ever hawk, cat, fox or man came near, Mother Cuni's

keen senses discovered him, and a smart 'thump' summoned her family

below ground at once. Of course, as accidents will happen, not all the

six grew up. A cunning old vixen from Knockdane came round one evening

and hid on the brow of the hill. Cuni's eldest born grew impatient,

and ventured out, in spite of his mother's warning 'thumps.' He was

never seen again, and neither was his sister who fed far out in the

field one evening and was marked down by a stoat.

When the survivors of the family were grown up, Cuni opened out an old

gallery, and lined it with grass bents and fur from her soft body. She

grew very morose and shy at this time, and would let none of her other

offspring venture near. A few days later a second litter appeared, but

Cuni did not lead them out to graze with the others until July was

well begun. During the long summer evenings the rabbits lay and basked

in the sun, stretching themselves on the hot sand to warm their white

waistcoats, or fed and frolicked with one another. A rabbit is the

most humorous and cheerful creature in the world--those whose lives

are hardest and most precarious usually are--and delights in nothing

so much as in playing off a mild joke on his fellows. Only

Fluff-Button fed apart, and kept his own little plot of pasture to

himself; for he permitted no liberties, and kept strict discipline

among his sons and daughters.

Now that the rabbit family was so increased, they enlarged their

quarters considerably. Sometimes they used the tunnels of a bygone

generation, but more often dug them out for themselves. This is a plan

of the burrow, and, as will be seen, it is very complicated and

irregular. Whenever one of the rabbits felt inclined he dug a new

passage, but as he generally left it unfinished, there were many blind

alleys which led nowhere in particular. All the parts which are shaded

in the plan were seldom-used 'hide-ups' and 'escapes,' but the rabbits

knew their geography very well, and in times of danger generally had

at least one 'bolt-hole' open.

That August was very wet and cold. There was never very much grass on

Garry's Hill, and now what there was was wet and sodden, and the wind

drove through the lonely hawthorn bush on the summit with a roaring

rush. Clouds of mist drifted over Knockdane, and the pigeons were

blown about the rainy skies. The hill burrow was well drained and dry,

but on the flat lands the holes were filled with water, and the

rabbits lay out in the damp woods.

Garry's Hill stood in a field, at the bottom of which was a blackthorn

fence among whose roots dwelt a colony of brown rats. A stream flowed

swiftly at the foot of the hedge, and one gusty afternoon when one of

the rabbits crept out to nibble a little sodden grass, it was rising

fast. The rabbit did not notice it, however, for the Fur Folk have no

time to waste over what does not directly concern them, and even when

she saw a big grey rat, dripping wet, run up the bank, she did not

take the alarm.

All the early part of the night the rain came down steadily until the

upper galleries of the warren were quite wet. The burrow was pitch

dark, and the air hot and thick, when Cuni awoke. She was blocked in

on all sides by warm furry bodies, nevertheless she detected an

unusual noise at the burrow's mouth--a faint scratching, and then a

squeak. Something was creeping in. Cuni kicked the ground warningly,

and as the others awoke, she pushed into the main passage. Something

small and wiry beneath her paws squealed and snapped. Cuni darted up

the passage stamping wildly--it was a rat.

By this time the rest of the rabbits were awake and rushing about in a

panic. Every now and then they collided in the darkness, and fled

under the impression that they had run against an enemy. Rabbits are

like sheep: let one lose his head and the rest will follow suit.

Suddenly there was a sonorous 'thump,' and Fluff-Button, king of the

burrow, came out of his dormitory, to be nearly carried off his legs

by a pair of rabbits who jostled past him. All at once, in the

narrowest part of the tunnel, he came upon a party of rats. They were

all draggled and wet, and crowded into the burrow for shelter, for the

brook had risen and drowned them out of their homes. Fluff-Button

backed into a hide-up, and the rats crowded after him. A rabbit cannot

fight his best in cramped quarters, but a grown buck has plenty of

courage when pushed into a corner, and his sharp claws are weapons not

to be despised. One rat nipped Fluff-Button's shoulder, and in an

instant the latter buried his teeth in the aggressor's quarters. The

rat yelled, for they cut like chisels, and his companions came on

eagerly. Like a schooner among a fleet of herring boats, Fluff-Button

ploughed through the band, jostling them right and left, and sprang

into the wider chamber further on where a herd of frightened doe

rabbits crouched. Here he had more space, and when he heard the

invaders coming, he kicked out with his strong hind claws. The

foremost rat rolled back limply with blood upon his snout, and

instantly the rest threw themselves upon him with shrill cries.

Fluff-Button took advantage of the respite to fly. He scuttled through

the tortuous windings of the burrow, and through a bolt-hole to the

open air. It was still raining fitfully, but there was a pale streak

in the east where the sun would presently rise. Rabbits popped in and

out of all the holes, for they dared not rest below ground lest the

rats should drive them into one of the many 'hide-ups' and then attack

them. Fluff-Button scampered over the brow of the hill, and into a

bolt-hole on the other side, where he lay panting.

There was a young rabbit of Cuni's first family, who, although the

season was so late, had a litter in a remote chamber, just beyond

where Fluff-Button lay. She dared not thump, lest the noise should

betray her presence, but lay very still with four youngsters nuzzling

at her side. By and by Fluff-Button heard something sniffing its way

towards him, for the tunnel carried sound like a telephone. The

anxious little mother also heard it, and sat up. Fluff-Button waited

until he judged that the rat was within range, and then flung up a

shower of sand with his hind feet. The rat squeaked and sat up to dust

his whiskers. He imagined that he had come up a blind passage, and

retraced his steps. Now there were two ways which he might have taken,

but as luck would have it, he chose the wrong one, and blundered up

the gallery towards Brownie's nursery. It was shaped like a bottle

with a long winding neck, and in the narrowest part he met Brownie.

As a rule a doe rabbit is the gentlest of wild things; but motherhood

will nerve the most timid, and Brownie's whiskers twitched as she

faced the foe who was stealing towards her in the darkness. The rat

cried out, and was answered by three or four of his comrades, who

crowded after him. They were hungry, and very fierce, for they had

already tasted blood and knew that a meal awaited them if they could

win it.

In mortal terror Brownie struck out right and left with her teeth, and

sundry squeaks told her that her snaps had taken effect. Two rats

clung to her on either side, but hampered as she was, she kept the

rest at bay, for while she struggled they could not press past her

into the nest.

Just now the rabbits were in desperate straits. Two of the weaklier

youngsters had been killed, and many more were badly bitten. Gradually

the rats were driving them out as wolves drive sheep. All alone in the

distant nesting burrow, Brownie faced her assailants and held her body

as a living shield to protect her little ones; but she was failing

fast. The airless darkness around her seemed full of noise, hot

gasping breathing, and snapping teeth.

Suddenly a strong pungent odour drifted down the passage--an odour

which every rabbit knows and fears; and Brownie made a last despairing

struggle, for her nose told her as well as her eyes could have done

that a stoat was loping towards the scene of the fight. The rats

rallied their forces in alarm, and the rabbits stampeded anew, for

both knew that their most deadly enemy was hunting through the warren.

But for once in a way the stoat brought salvation to the rabbits on

Garry's Hill, for a rash rat snapped, and his teeth met in the

newcomer's shoulder. Instantly four stiletto points pierced his

brain--he tottered round in a circle, sobbed and died. The stoat, with

his appetite whetted, passed on and drove into the press of rats. They

clung round him like leeches, but the place was very narrow and they

could not reach his flanks. In that face-to-face combat in the

darkness the odds were with the stoat. A rat's courage is indomitable

and his teeth are sharp; but between them and those of the stoat there

is all the difference between a scythe and a bayonet. Both are good

cutting instruments, but the latter is fashioned expressly for war

and the former is not.

The stoat went into the fray joyously. He slew two and drove the

others back. Then, for he never noticed Brownie trembling in her

nursery, he glided off and made his way to the main dormitory, where

he found another party of rats assembled. These fled before him into a

'hide-up,' whither he followed them, and although he sustained two or

three wounds himself, he mortally wounded another. The tables were now

turned with a vengeance. The rats were in a worse plight than their

whilom victims; for wet, starving and bewildered, they were hunted

through a strange warren by their most implacable enemy. The rabbits

had one and all retreated to the remotest corners which they could

find, but the stoat heeded them not, for he killed among the

panic-stricken rats for the sheer lust of killing. Even if by chance

he crossed a rabbit's trail and followed it up, he invariably stumbled

across some terrified rat who sat and jibbered in the darkness.

At last he was satiated and retired to Fluff-Button's dormitory to

sleep. Two rabbits were dead besides Brownie's litter, who had paid

the grim penalty which is always paid by nestlings whose nursery is

discovered. Of the rats, two had been wounded and slain by their

fellows; the stoat had accounted for four; as many more had bolted

from the burrow; and the survivors, some six in number, cowered in an

old nursery as far as possible from their enemy.

The stoat slept until the day was well advanced towards noon, and

neither rat nor rabbit dared to stir lest he should wake and slay once

more. At last he rose and glided from the burrow, and then--and not

until then--did they venture to leave their hiding-places.

So that was the end of the great invasion of Garry's Hill, but it was

long before the rabbits settled down afterwards. As for the remnants

of the rats, they retreated to the little-used end of the warren and

established a system of tiny passages of their own, running among

those of the rabbits. They lived on terms of armed neutrality with

their unwilling hosts--never daring to attack a full-grown buck or

doe, although not so scrupulous with regard to nestlings; and often on

warm summer evenings, if you hide behind the brow of the hill and

wait, you may see the rats and rabbits feeding and playing side by

side.

CHAPTER IV

THE FEAR THAT WAS IN THE WAY

Brownie was one of the first family of Fluff-Button and Cuni. It has

already been related how she fought the rats in the Garry's Hill

burrow, and enough has been said to show that she was a very devoted

mother, as indeed most rabbits are. But she had been so terrified by

that experience that she resolved to make her next nest right away

from the warren; so she dug a hole into the hillside at about a

hundred yards' distance.

In the darkness her four babies were only known to her as a squeaking,

naked mass, helpless and wholly beloved. She was ignorant of their

very number, they had no individuality, nevertheless she lavished all

her care upon them, and lay with them all day, feeding and licking

them. Only at nightfall she crept out to feed herself, with both ears

on the alert. But very few enemies crossed Garry's Hill at night. Now

and then an owl hooted in Knockdane; the nightjars purred among the

pine trees at the bottom of the hill; and from the warren came the

distant bustle of the rabbit community--the munching of many teeth,

the splashing of many feet in the dew, and the stamping of scores of

signals.

The fern croziers had fully uncoiled, and the lowest bells on the wild

hyacinth carillons were fading, before the babies acquired their fur

jackets. Under ordinary circumstances they would have remained below

ground a few days longer, but an unfortunate accident hurried them out

into the world.

Theoretically June is the month of sunshine and flowers; actually--in

Knockdane, at all events--there are flowers enough, but June is too

often ushered in by pitiless soaking rain. All the new greenery of the

woods is saturated, and the hemlocks and nettles, stimulated to ardent

growth, begin to send up their shoots waist-high. This is what

happened in the season of which I write, for it rained for two nights

and a day, and all the flowers seemed drowned. There was trouble

enough in the Garry's Hill burrows, but it was very serious indeed for

Brownie. A nesting-hole is dug for temporary use only, and has not the

drainage of a permanent burrow. The water soon began to filter in from

the sides, and a very respectable trickle ran from the entrance. By

the second morning the bedding was soaked, and the sucklings lay in a

pool of water. For the present they were homeless, and Brownie saw

that the only thing was to take them into the fields. Three brown

tots, blinking painfully in the daylight, crawled on to the grass;

but when the fourth appeared, Brownie sat up, and her nose worked as

fast as the 'quaking grass' round, for the last little rabbit was as

white as the hawthorns in the hedgerows. There were legends in

Knockdane that, in the days when the beeches round the Great White

House were saplings, there had been a race of white rabbits in the

woods; but for many many years none had been seen there. Perhaps some

long-gone ancestor had transmitted his singular colouring to Brownie's

nestling, or else some trifling detail in Nature's machinery had been

out of gear, for she had not a brown hair upon her, and out on the

open slope was as conspicuous as a crow on a snowdrift. However, the

Fur Folk live and work only in the present. They are guided by

mysterious laws--the accumulated wisdom of past generations--written

in the blood of those who went before and neglected to obey the

code--and Brownie knew that her babies must lie out on the hillside,

for to take them to the warren was to court disaster. She hid the

first one in a tussock six feet away in one direction, and the second

a few paces from him, while the third was left in some clover. The

fourth--the white one--had to put up with a meagre root of rushes.

When each little rabbit lay stone-still, the mother went away herself,

for she knew that her presence would only add to their danger. When

she looked back to judge of the success of her stratagem, the three

brown babies were invisible in the grass, but the white one could be

seen all over the field. Nevertheless, because of the rulings of the

law of the Fur Folk, Brownie went her way, and left her litter to

shift for themselves during the day.

The rain had ceased at sunrise, and, although grey vapours curled

before the clearing lift, the hillside was a very pleasant place.

There were rosy clover clubs, and the yellow bird's foot trefoil

beloved of blue butterflies, daisies, and the dainty milkweed, all

growing so close together that the grass was almost crowded out. The

fluting of the blackbirds in Knockdane only seemed the more mellow for

the rain, and skylarks mounted up in rapturous jubilee.

The sun had climbed quite high before the sparrow-hawk came swinging

round the wood. He spied the tell-tale white ears a hundred yards

away, and turned towards them. He slanted down at fifty miles an hour,

glanced aside six feet from the rush-tuft, and switch-backed upwards

again--rabbit verily, but doubtful--uncanny--_white_. Again he stooped

and hovered. This stillness, this whiteness transcended his

experience. It was too blatantly conspicuous--there was surely

something in it not apparent to the eye. Perhaps it was a trap. As the

hawk paused, his grim shadow fluttered above the youngster in the

clover, and the latter lost his nerve. He ran a few inches and

crouched again. The hawk saw a quarry which was normal and probably

safe. Besides, he was hungry. He dropped on to the grass, and pitching

lightly, struck. There was a little cry; and then flying low,

overweighted with his burden, he skimmed across the field.

That was the first, but not the last time, that danger turned aside

from the--white rabbit I was about to say, but let us rather give her

the dignity of capitals, a dignity ever afterwards hers in Knockdane,

and speak of her as the White Rabbit. For the rest of the day no

living things but larks and bumble bees came near, although once or

twice a bullock blundered by and set the rabbits' hearts

thit-thudding. Towards evening the mother-rabbit came up the hill to

the nesting burrow. The babies heard her coming well enough, but

two--the White One and a brown--were too well drilled to budge. The

third, however, ran to her unsummoned, and was instantly punished for

his disobedience, for she kicked him head over heels, and then

signalled to the others that their time of waiting was over. Whether

she noticed that one was missing I cannot say. The Fur Folk have no

time to grieve. She gathered the three remaining ones together, and

fed them and licked them all over tenderly with soft whisker kisses.

They spent that night on the hill. When it rained the babies sheltered

under their mother's soft coat and did not know how cold it was.

Brownie could have told how sharp the night winds were, and how wet

the ground, but the little bodies under her white vest were warm, and

that was compensation enough for her.

The next day they again lay out on the hill; but alas! the

sparrow-hawk has a good memory, and where he has killed one day, he

will come the next. Thus it happened that on the second evening only

two answered the mother's signal--the White Rabbit and a brown

brother.

On the third day Brownie took them down the field. It was dangerous,

for the hedge was full of enemies, but she dared not risk the hawk

again. Even the peeps from the hill had not prepared the little ones

for anything so immense as the world into which they came, blue sky

overhead and grass--a perfect forest peopled with strange beasts--all

around them. Brownie was ravenous, and the young ones, watching her

tear off grass blades and eat them up, ventured for the first time on

imitation. She kept her family in the ditch all day, she herself lying

hidden close at hand with eyes and ears always alert for danger.

Nevertheless, for all her care, the little brown rabbit strayed too

far from her side, and being young and ignorant, he never heard the

sniff-sniff of the stoat hunting down a runway, until it was too late.

Then Brownie, who knew the meaning of that pitiful minor cry, very

quickly and silently shepherded her one remaining young one over the

fence into the next field; and the scent was cold before Keen resumed

his hunting.

So only one of the litter remained, and for three days Brownie guarded

her jealously. On the fourth morning very early they went out to feed.

The dewfall had been very heavy, and soaked them from nose tip to

tail, and the bats wheeled overhead. The coat of the little White

Rabbit looked weird in the gloom as she sat up and tried to comb her

whiskers as her mother did. Of the short hot nights of June--of their

mystery, and their majesty, and the ways of their children, what do

men know? Nothing, but they mar much. Only the white owl had seen Jack

Skehan go his rounds at sunset, and he, who, happy bird, lived where

pole traps were unknown, how could he know the significance of what

was left on the hedge bank? So it came to pass that at sunrise, when

the larks were singing on the hill, and the whitethroats babbling in

the brambles, Brownie, slithering through the hedge with her suckling

behind her, slipped her head into a snare cunningly set against a

burrow mouth, and somersaulted into the ditch, drawing the noose tight

round her neck. At the first alarm the little one bolted and hid

tremulously in a clump of buttercups, not daring to move for several

minutes. Then, as all was still and the robins began to sing again,

she ventured to peep out. Her mother stood raised on her hind legs as

she had often seen her before when about to climb such a bank; but now

Brownie leaned there statue-still, her hind paws just dragging on the

ground. The White Rabbit did not understand it at all. She bit off a

few grass blades and tried to chew them up, but they seemed hard and

stringy to her unaccustomed teeth, and she ventured to nuzzle at her

mother's soft coat. It was quite warm, but Brownie took no notice of

the caress; and when the little one pushed against her, she swung ever

so gently to and fro.

The sun rose over the crest of Garry's Hill, and the

dragon-flies--winged needles of red and blue--hawked backwards and

forwards over the brambles. The White Rabbit did not stray very far

from the place; she waited for her mother to go on, but Brownie gave

no signal, nor did she stir. The little one grew uneasy, and raising

herself on her fluffy tail licked her mother's flank to show that she

was hungry, but even this never-failing appeal received no answer.

Nevertheless soon afterwards, when Jack Skehan went the round of his

snares, he found a doe rabbit hanging in the hedge bottom with her

neck broken; and nestling at her side, tiptoeing up to reach, a little

white rabbit was helping herself to a warm drink. Even in death

Brownie fulfilled the first office of motherhood.

How the White Rabbit knew that man was dangerous I cannot say.

Hitherto she had innocently trusted every bird and beast; but bolt she

did, and only just in time, as a dirty brown hand snatched at her. She

ran up the hedge as fast as her stumpy legs could carry her, stubbing

her nose against hemlock stalks, and tripping over bramble trailers.

It seemed to her that she had run many miles, but as a matter of fact

it was only ten yards before she flopped down, utterly breathless,

with her flanks heaving. For the first time she was afraid--terribly

afraid. Every leaf concealed an enemy, every rustle seemed a footstep.

Fear was abroad on the hedgeside. The shadow of the man's presence

lingered even when his footsteps had passed into the distance. A

broody blackbird 'chinked' anxiously, and a pigeon wheeled aside with

a '_swoof_.' A few inches from where the little rabbit lay gaped a

bolt-hole of the hedge burrow, and her instinct bade her creep within

into the cool, comfortable darkness.

This is how the White Rabbit entered upon her life in the woods,

orphaned, with nothing to guide her but the ancestral code which every

rabbit knows. However, she had already learned three things, and

important ones too--that hawks are dangerous, stoats still more so,

and men are to be dreaded most of all.

* * * * *

Were I to relate all the vicissitudes which befell the White Rabbit

during the following days, I should be accused of recounting miracles;

for perhaps under the circumstances not one rabbit in ten would have

survived. The ditch was full of enemies, for hedges are the Fur Folk's

highways from field to field, and foxes, cats, and stoats patrolled it

from hour to hour. The next evening the White Rabbit worked along to

the demesne wall, under which a little drain ran, and crept into the

wood. If there was vastness and mystery in the fields, how much more

under the trees? The sanicle spread a silvery pall above the dying

bluebells; the thick scent of the hawthorn was borne to and fro on the

night wind; and the woodcock, playing in the dusk, 'chissicked' as

they wheeled overhead. That night, for the first time, the White

Rabbit ate grass and relished it. She was very hungry, and once her

little teeth learned the knack of nibbling criss-cross up a blade, she

found that it was pleasanter than her previous attempts had led her to

believe. In fact, she was so intent upon her newly learned

accomplishment that she never heard the owl swoop down with a thrum of

soft wings, and then slant up just as the hawk had done on the hill.

But she heard the click as he alighted on a branch overhead, and

seeing his eyes, catlike and luminous in the gloom, she hid under a

bush.

A day or two later, the White Rabbit had one of the narrowest escapes

of her life. Perhaps she had got over her first fright and grown

reckless; at any rate, she came out into the grass in broad daylight.

The field was purple with ripening grasses, and the warm wind bore the

scent of young birch leaves--the sweetest of all summer scents. It was

good to be alive. The White Rabbit lay down on her side, and stretched

herself luxuriously in the hot sun. Bees hummed comfortably in the

vetches, and the grasshoppers assiduously polished their shanks.

Suddenly, in the sunshine-chequered hedge, she caught sight of a

curious creature moving gently to and fro. She had never seen anything

quite like it before. Its deliberate, rhythmical movements fascinated

her, and she watched it dance behind a dock plant and out again, with

an intentness which rejoiced the heart of a certain wary hunter who

crouched behind the said dock. The White Rabbit hopped a step or two

nearer, and stood up in order to see this wonderful thing better. At

that moment the cat ceased to lash its tail and sprang. The rabbit

caught a glimpse of unsheathed claws, bared gums, and dilated eyes,

and dived into a forest of cockfoot grass. The cat, at fault, made

short excited rushes hither and thither as he heard the rustle of the

fugitive's steps, but the White Rabbit flung herself into a stunted

blackthorn bush and lay gasping. By and by, when she had recovered

sufficiently from her fright to sit up and polish the 'cuckoo froth'

from her whiskers, she peeped out; and lo and behold in a runway, with

his paws tucked away cosily before him, the cat sat and waited.... The

White Rabbit very silently withdrew, and escaped by the further side

of the bush. That was the fourth lesson she learned: Beware of the

cat--the patient hunter.

It was not until she was three parts grown that the White Doe realised

that she was not in all respects like other rabbits. By then she had

learned many things. She knew that the badger and the hedgehog and the

squirrel and the shrew are quite harmless, but that the fox and the

stoat and the cat must be avoided. She knew that the meadow-grass

tastes better than either the cockfoot or the couch; and that the

surest way to come to grief is to bolt into a hole without first

finding out whether it has a back door or no. By degrees, however, she

began to find out something more important still, namely, that the

rest of the Fur Folk turned aside from her path. Did she hop into the

clearing where the other rabbits came of nights to feed, or visited

the Dark Pool among the sallies, then the circle was immediately

broken up, and vanishing feet fired a whole volley of signals from the

bushes. If she fed in the daytime, the squirrels overhead chattered

and speculated until the jays took up the matter, and half the

woodside was in a fluster. This knowledge did not come in a day. The

pignut flowers died, and the enchanter's nightshade had sent up its

faint spires in dark places before the White Rabbit realised her

powers. It was the fox who opened her eyes to the fact that a certain

magic was hers in her perilous ways. One evening after sunset she

squatted upon a 'rabbit's table.' There is a rabbit 'table' in almost

every glade. It is generally a moss-grown tree stump, or more seldom

an ant-hill, upon which the rabbits love to sit for the sake of the

expansive view (comparatively speaking) which the extra twelve inches

affords them. It is also very often a trysting-place. The White Rabbit

was washing herself. It was the penalty which she paid for her

uniqueness, that she was obliged to spend no mean portion of the day

combing her pink ears and cleansing her silky stockings. Hence she

neither heard nor winded the fox's approach until he snapped a twig in

the clearing itself. Then, looking up, she saw in the shadows what

appeared to be a pair of red stars. The blood of the White Rabbit

seemed turned to water; she was paralysed with fear; even her nose

ceased its eternal tremolo. She could only stare back, bemused with

terror. It must be said that the fox had not entered the glade with

any fixed idea of hunting there, he was merely passing through it;

hence the increased awfulness of the apparition of the ghost-rabbit on

the moss cushion. It was nearly dark, but a shaft of light came down

aslant between two tree-tops. In the gloom she appeared larger than

her natural size--misty, luminous. The hair along the fox's spine

bristled, a growl rose in his throat. It was so quiet, so light; as

if fascinated he began to tiptoe forward. Remember that there is

hardly anything white known in the woods, except here and there a

flower. There is neither white bird nor beast; even the white eggs of

the pigeon are laid where none of the Fur Folk can see them, except it

be Koutchee the squirrel. Men--wiseacres--who would judge Nature by

their printed books, talk grandly of the benefit of Protective

Resemblance, and the Survival of the Fittest. They have left out of

count the germ planted in the being of the higher Fur Folk--a germ

which is often carried from birth to death undreamed of,

undeveloped--but which in man, another step up the ladder,

becomes a power which is accountable for untold cruelty and

strife--superstition. Had all rabbits been white since the first of

the race, then indeed the fox's hunting would be easy enough; but when

once in ten generations a white rabbit appears, its chances of life

are many times greater than those of its fellows, for in the eyes of

the hunters it is compassed round with magic, a thing set apart.

The fox crept to within eight feet of the mystery and cowered down,

for there was little or no scent to enlighten him as to its nature.

The White Rabbit's red eyes were wide with horror, but under the

nightmare spell of the fox's proximity she could not move. Fear

clogged her limbs, and she watched him, fascinated. She was, of

course, entirely unaware that it was she herself who thus checked him.

She believed herself almost invisible, and feared to move lest she

should betray her presence, thus obeying the arbitrary law of her

race: Lie still and he may pass you by. So they gazed eye to eye while

one might pant half a score of times, and then a heron, sweeping by

with a shriek which ripped the silence of the night, broke the spell.

With a snarl the fox leaped sideways into the bushes; and the rabbit,

ears flattened, paws twitching, crouched where she was until the rush

of his footsteps died away. After this adventure the White Rabbit

gradually grew bolder. She lived in some ready-made burrows in the

corner of the wood, and fed in the field below Garry's Hill. But if a

prowling cat or fox came by, and the rest of the community dived

underground, the White One merely sat at the hole's mouth and waited;

and in two cases out of three the hunter, after a stealthy glance,

passed on. The third case was generally a cat who, more accustomed to

the mysterious ways of men, their dependents and belongings, was not

afraid to stalk the White Doe of Garry's Hill.

By this time it was August, and the birds went to moult in the deepest

thickets of Knockdane. Only an occasional robin sang a bar or two of

his roundelay, or a chiff-chaff, who had forgotten the rhythm of his

call, cried 'chaff-chaff' in the beech trees. Big spikes of purple

loosestrife crowned the damper clearings, and missel thrushes went out

to the fields in straggling bands. The mornings grew cooler and later,

damp mists steamed up from the river, and the beeches began to turn

orange and brown. One fine night the cuckoos disappeared, and the

corn-crakes prepared to follow them, for the corn was ripe, and all

through the hazy days the whirr of machinery was heard from the hills,

like some gigantic grasshopper. The squirrels and oxeyes squabbled in

the hazels, and the badgers went harvesting when the moon rose. To the

Fur Folk the autumn was a faint echo of the spring. There was

something in the mild, still weather, and equal hours of day and

night, which stirred them to vague repetition of their doings early in

the year. The rabbits wandered away from their burrows, and made

desultory scrapings by the pathsides, and the birds, the throstle and

pigeon, sang again half heartedly. The White Rabbit, with no idea why

she did so, also dutifully scratched little holes in the moss, and

followed faint trails which led nowhere in particular. However, the

first frost put an end to all this; and after the frosts came the

November gales, which slashed the sleet across the woods. Once or

twice the men came to shoot in Knockdane, but the White Rabbit was

safe enough, for she never made a 'form,' but always lay underground.

In fact, there was little enough covert in that part of Knockdane in

the winter, and in January, when the foxes were ravenous, the woods

were quite bare. However, the White Rabbit passed unscathed through

that time of peril; even the traps, which doubly decimated her

companions, spared her. Nature, who had put a mark upon her which set

her apart from her fellows, had in compensation gifted her with keener

wits and judgment. As everybody knows, a rabbit track runs hop-dot

down the hedgerow like a rosary of beads, and Paddy Magragh set his

snares cunningly in the beads, which are the little patches from which

the rabbits hop over the tussocks; but the White Doe went safely to

and fro, merely skipping aside if the wicked loop struck her nose.

Perhaps, again, it was her colour which saved her here, for many a

bunny blundered into the noose when his fellows chased him in sport or

anger; but the brown rabbits ignored the White Doe, and she hopped

leisurely between her hole and the meadow unharmed. Nevertheless,

towards the end of the winter, she, with the rest of the rabbit kind,

suffered grievously from famine, for the weather had spoiled all the

greenery in the woods. Here again it was the White Rabbit who first

set the example of climbing into the boughs of a fallen thorn tree to

gnaw a meagre sustenance from the bark of the ivy entwined in it. The

idea became fashionable in her burrow; and, clambering clumsily among

the branches three or four feet from the ground, the rabbits chiselled

away at the ivy until its twigs were as white as bone.

With February--the famine month--the love season began in earnest. All

the other rabbits who lived in the outlying collection of burrows with

the White Doe, forsook them and wandered down into the woods; while up

on Garry's Hill the ground was dotted with the little tufts of grey

wool, ripped from one rival by another. The White Rabbit paid no

attention to these changes at first, but led her own contented

spinster life. The Wild Folk concern themselves very little about the

doings of their neighbours; and had every rabbit in Knockdane been

suddenly wiped out of existence, the White One would not have altered

her habits in a single particular.

It was not until the woodcock began to mate that the White Rabbit

found out that she was lonely. Then she left her burrow and went out

into the woods, which was a dangerous thing to do in daylight. The

robin was reciting his marriage vows to his mate under a holly bush;

and the pigeons, recklessly bold, flapped lazily from tree to tree.

The White Rabbit scraped enthusiastically for a few minutes, for she

felt impelled to unaccountable energy that day, but when she had dug a

few inches she broke off, for she could not remember what to do with

the hole when she had finished it. Near at hand a buck rabbit stamped,

and presently another, larger than he, came out of the bushes and

fought him. The White Doe hopped towards them, but being stranger

rabbits they broke off their tournament, and fled at the sight of her

whiteness. She saw many rabbits that day, and half of them ran away,

and the other half were indifferent. The White Rabbit had never felt

so lonely before--not even when her mother had been taken from her.

Presently she came upon a luckless rabbit which had been killed by a

stoat an hour before. The White Rabbit did not know this, and went up

to sniff at him. Here at last was something which would not run from

her; but when she smelt the fresh blood and saw the wound behind his

ear, she turned and galloped away. There was fear everywhere. She was

feared by her own kind; and she again feared the blood-hunters. A wren

caught sight of her and began to scold--it, too, was afraid. The

White Rabbit was very sorrowful.

The Love Longing was not always so strong. Sometimes for weeks at a

time she lived alone as happily as heretofore. Then it would break out

again, and send her into the woods; but she never found a mate,

although young rabbits played outside the burrows, and the birds were

all nesting. So March turned to April, and April to May, and the

lowest bracken fronds opened like green wings before the crimped tops

were uncurled. Then again one day the Love Longing came upon the White

Rabbit, and she went to the Dark Pool where the Fur Folk go to drink.

There are willow saplings all round, and the chaffinches were

collecting the down for nest-lining, for the seeds were ripening. On

the further side the White Doe passed a rabbit's 'registry' tree. Most

woods have their own registry where the buck rabbits repair in spring,

and each tries to scrape away the bark and set the imprint of his

teeth a little higher than his fellows. Most of the rabbit duels take

place near these trees. Sometimes it is a young sycamore, or a laurel,

or a beech, which is chosen out from among the rest; but in this part

of Knockdane it was a willow sapling, peeled and scored for two feet

above the ground, and with little paths, beaten hard by rabbity feet,

converging to it from every direction. As the White Doe passed by, she

saw a brown buck rabbit, on his hind legs, leisurely rubbing his

whiskers against the trunk; and hopping up quietly behind him she

touched him with her white nose. He darted away a few paces, and sat

rigid. The White Doe approached him beseechingly and caressed him with

a whisker kiss; but he only stared horror-stricken at her wonderful

pink eyes, beat his fore paws once or twice in surprise and dismay,

and scudded out of sight.

All that day the Love Longing would not be satisfied, and when the

White Rabbit fed outside her burrow after dark, the restlessness in

her grew so strong that she crept from the shadow of the trees to

Garry's Hill. She had scarcely ever visited her native warren, and on

the rare occasions on which she wandered thither, the whole burrow had

been thrown into a panic. It was dark on the hill, for the moon was

behind the clouds. The rabbit people were all munching busily, and the

White Rabbit, happy in a sense of companionship, crouched near them.

Now and then one bunny, in the sheer joy of living, skipped three feet

into the air, and the older bucks chivied the younger ones in and out

of the earthworks which many generations of excavators had thrown up.

Two rabbits were playing 'tig' on the slope, dodging one another

backwards and forwards. The White Doe watched their twinkling white

scuts for a minute, and then, just as the moon broke from behind the

clouds, with a hop, skip, and jump she launched herself playfully

between the couple. They stood still for one paralysed instant, and

then, stamping frantically, the whole community stampeded in every

direction. The White Rabbit did not realise that she was responsible

for this flight, but, believing it to mean cat or stoat, she bolted

with the rest. She plunged down a burrow and scurried along

never-ending corridors and side-ways. She could hear footsteps which

fled before her, and all round the passages rang with muffled danger

signals. At last she entered a hide-up, and hearing shuffling feet,

explored it to its end. In the dark she collided with something which

was furry and soft, and felt twitching whiskers brush her face.

Another rabbit had taken refuge there; and surely it was--yes, it

was--the noses of the Fur Folk are as trustworthy as our eyes--the

same who had repulsed her in the wood that morning. But obviously he

did not recognise her in the darkness, for he cowered to her at the

end of the passage. There was comfort in companionship, and they

huddled together, fearful lest something stealthy and terrible should

sniff its way towards them. The White Rabbit thought of stoats, but

the other dreaded nameless things--magic things, white things--which

leaped out of the gloom. Every now and then the White Rabbit turned

her head and nestled against the soft fur of the other's shoulder.

Here was rabbit--normal rabbit, brown rabbit--and yet he did not

shrink from her, for in her turn she felt a tremulous nose sniff at

her ears....

* * * * *

An hour afterwards the business of the Garry's Hill warren went on as

usual. The White Doe was still below ground, but after midnight she

came out with the Brown Buck behind her. The rest of the warren

stamped, but little recked she. If the Brown Buck was staggered at the

sight of her in the moonlight, he did not show it. White or brown, did

he not know the scent of her who had come to him in the burrow, and

who perhaps had stood between him and the misty terror that had leaped

upon him in the dark. This was rabbit--strange, it is true--but still

rabbit and wholly lovable. He put his head under her chin that she

might scratch his ears, and this is the greatest token of esteem among

the rabbit kind. Thus the spell was broken, and the fear which was

round the White Doe was gone, for she had become as other rabbits.

She had entered into her inheritance, the inheritance of

motherhood--the highest happiness known in the woods.

They nestled side by side under the old whitethorn which, for once in

a way, forgot to moan as the wind went down. The moon set, and the fur

of the White Doe gleamed in the starlight. But now the rabbits around

only munched unconcernedly. There was no more mystery about her; for,

in the words of the greatest love song ever penned, and as true of the

beasts as of the men for whom it was written, she was her beloved's,

and his desire was towards her.

CHAPTER V

UNDER THE MOON

A little band of forewandered plover flapped southwards drearily. To

the east the mountains were still encumbered with the great snowclouds

which had driven over Knockdane an hour before, and converted Garry's

Hill into a white sugar loaf. Now it was evening, and as the red sun

sank, he flushed the fields with a dream-pink, while the moon

struggled over the stormy hills.

Cuni hopped out into the cold air and shook each paw delicately, for

the snow clung to them. Her eyes looked bigger and her ears longer

than when we saw her last, for the cruel February weather, which

spared neither the Fur nor the Feather Folk, had pressed the rabbits

sorely. For weeks frost and thaw had alternated night by night, and

slowly killed every green leaf and blade of grass. Sometimes cold rain

fell and soaked the woods, at others snow came and covered them.

Within five hundred yards of the warren there was not a tuft of grass

large enough to make a 'form'; and the rabbits lay below ground in

their damp burrows, and tried to deaden the hunger pain with sleep.

Although it was scarcely an hour since the snowstorm had blown by,

Fluff-Button had already left Garry's Hill for the woods; and a neat

trail--two little tentative punches of the forefeet over-passed by the

bolder impression of the hind--indicated which path he had taken. Cuni

followed him across the field. The snow was not more than two inches

deep and the longest grass blades peered through it.

Knockdane Woods are surrounded by a mason-built stone wall six feet

high; but in one spot the ivy, insinuating itself between the stones,

has loosened them, and the smaller Fur Folk--the rabbits, rats, and

stoats--have scratched a tunnel leading into the woods. Through this

passage Cuni hopped, and passed from the bleakness of the white fields

into an enchanted palace. Every twig and bough bore its burden of

whiteness. The fir trees were converted into huge Christmas trees, and

the beeches' branches were etched against a sky suffused with the

illusive lilac reflections of the snow. There was an uncanny white

glamour over the woods, and except for the distant roar of the

unfrozen river rushing between its banks, a vast silence had fallen

upon Knockdane.

Not far from the wall, in a clearing, there is a pool. It is black and

stagnant, with banks overgrown with yellow pimpernel, water flags, and

rushes; nevertheless many of the Fur Folk depend upon it for their

water supply. To-night it was darned across with ice needles, and the

silver 'cat-ice' round the edge crackled under Cuni's paws. As she

expected, Fluff-Button was seated on the other bank taking a tonic. In

winter when the grass is sodden and tasteless, rabbits are seized with

a burning desire for strong astringent food, and they often wander far

from their burrows to seek rushes, or the dry bark of saplings.

To-night Fluff-Button gnawed the knotted roots of the wild iris, and

as their bitterness burnt his mouth and made him sneeze, his nose

quivered with pleasure. On any other night Cuni would have kept at a

respectful distance from her lord; but to-night, in spite of the frost

and snow, the Love Longing was beginning to awaken among the rabbit

kind, and instinctively she felt that he would not repulse her. She

approached him diffidently, and, instead of chasing her away, he

merely glanced up and coughed. She squatted at his side and chiselled

away at the iris roots, until the moon grew bright enough to light

snow candles on every twig and bough.

[Illustration: FLUFF-BUTTON WAS SEATED ON THE OTHER BANK TAKING A

TONIC]

So busy were they that they never heard the footsteps of Garry Skehan,

when, half an hour later, he crossed the snowy hill to Knockdane, nor

noticed how they paused at the spot where the double trail entered

the wood. The woodcraft of Garry Skehan was of a rough and ready sort;

for him wild creatures were divided into two broad classes--those

which could be trapped and those which could not--but even he could

tell that this was a rabbit run, and he chuckled over it. By and by he

tramped away over the crisp snow, so softly that not even the drowsy

pigeons overhead heard him.

Many of the Fur Folk passed outside the wall that night, and each one

stopped to look at the place where Garry Skehan had knelt and scored

the surface with his clumsy boots. First of all a rat came along,

trailing his naked tail callously on the snow behind him. He gave one

glance at the spot, and then hurriedly crossed the wall lower down. By

and by a stoat passed. It is not in stoat nature to resist a hole

wherever it may lead, and this one gingerly thrust in his nose; but at

that moment he caught sight of something under his feet and drew back

quietly. The mice came by and danced fairy quadrilles over the snow,

but they also left the hole in the wall alone.

As the moon rose higher the frost began to bite, and the snowflakes,

which had hitherto dropped rhythmically from the branches, were welded

firmly together; while every leaf upon the ground was so crisped with

rime that it crackled under the touch. Fluff-Button and Cuni, having

made a scanty meal of such bramble leaves and ferns as remained green,

turned homewards. Cuni went first, for her mate dallied behind to

scratch his whiskers against a tree trunk. She came to the hole in the

wall and hopped inside, for among the stones and mortar was hollowed a

little chamber. There was a thin wind blowing, which had drifted the

snow against the opposite opening and blocked it up, but the drift was

not thick, and crumbled away when Cuni thrust her nose against it. The

field was a white blank, marked with inky shadows below the trees, and

not a living thing was in sight.

With one comprehensive hop Cuni alighted in the drift, and at the same

instant something seized her hind leg. 'When in doubt, skip!' is the

rabbit maxim, which she obeyed instantly, but she was rudely jerked

back into the snow, and the grip on her leg tightened. She whisked

round to see her foe, and behold there was nothing there. Cuni was

terrified. She began to struggle desperately, but although the enemy's

clutch tightened, there was nothing to be seen but a long strand of

copper wire on the snow. Just then there was a rattle of stones, and

Fluff-Button hopped through the wall. He noticed nothing amiss, and

seeing that the snow was scraped away all round he began to munch the

frozen grass blades. In some measure his presence reassured Cuni. She

ceased to struggle, and in the perfect bliss of her mate's proximity

almost forgot the mysterious enemy that held her.

Meanwhile the face of the night was changed. A snowstorm came up and

drove tiny stinging flakes over the woods. They sifted into the

rabbits' coats until Fluff-Button hopped inside the wall, shaking his

ears. Cuni tried to follow, and although that unknown _something_

clutched her again, yet it permitted her to creep just inside the

hole. Her body prevented the entrance of the driving snow, and

Fluff-Button came and snuggled against her warm vest, while his

twitching whiskers left soft 'butterfly kisses' on her nose. In the

mother-instinct, which is as easily awakened in the woods as among

men, Cuni forgot that Fluff-Button was the King-Buck whose will was

law in the warren, and only remembered that he was cold and came to

her for warmth. She disregarded the snow which chilled her from

without, and licked him with her warm tongue as tenderly as if he had

been a sleepy suckling in the nesting burrow.

The snowstorm passed and the rabbits came out again. The moon sailed

up a sky as black and mysterious as a forest pool; and drowned the

stars, until only one great white one survived, and blinked down like

a wicked eye. Fluff-Button hopped away evidently expecting his mate to

follow him, and was much perplexed to find that she was unable to do

so. He sniffed her all over carefully, beseeching her to accompany

him. Cuni tried her best, but in vain, and lay down panting.

Fluff-Button became seriously annoyed. He was not used to

disobedience, and it must be told that he kicked his mate hard with

his strong hind leg. Finding that this did no good, he became alarmed.

Wild creatures hate and fear the unknown, and Cuni's predicament was a

most uncanny thing to rabbit ideas. Fluff-Button hopped away and began

to feed doubtfully on an old turnip rind some thirty yards off, and

took no notice of his mate's signals and struggles.

At last Cuni lay still and watched him. Nature is kind to her wild

children, and after the first biting coldness of the snow sends a

blessed lethargy which soothes away the pain. Cuni was fast drifting

into this dreamy state when her senses suddenly returned to her and

she sat up alertly. Silhouetted against the white field stole a lithe

form--pads which made no noise, eyes gleaming faintly red, ears cocked

forward towards the prey ahead of him in the snow, while the moonlight

laid a long grotesque shadow behind. The fox was thin and weak with

famine, and his whole attention was riveted upon Fluff-Button, who sat

with his back turned. He began to stalk his victim as noiselessly as a

cat, taking advantage of every ant-hill or snowdrift to screen

himself.

There are two laws which have been given to the rabbit kind in the

hour of danger. One is, 'Squat and be still'; and the other is,

'Scoot, if you will, but let your fellows know it.' A few rabbits obey

the first all their lives; but the majority--Cuni among the

number--'scoot' on an alarm, but as they run they stamp upon the

ground that their friends may hear and do likewise. However, Cuni was

wounded, and her wise instinct bade her lie still, and then the fox

would pass her by. With frightened fascinated eyes she watched the

dark form slide over the snow, clapping flat if the unconscious

Fluff-Button chanced to move.

'Lie still,' whispered Instinct, numbing her limbs with fear, 'he will

never see you.' But the Angel who works for the good of the race, and

who sacrifices his units that his tens may be saved, cried: 'Stamp

aloud and warn him, no matter what it may cost.' The two impulses

struggled together in Cuni's heart, and the fox cramped his limbs

together for the final rush.

'Thump!' It was a very feeble little sound, muffled by the soft snow.

'Again!' cried the stronger Angel, and summoning up all her strength,

Cuni stamped again. This time Fluff-Button heard. Without as much as a

glance behind, he bolted for the wall, leaped over his mate, dashed

into the tunnel, and the scurry of his steps died away.

The fox checked abruptly; he knew that in the woods he had no chance

against a cunning buck rabbit, and if Cuni had lain still perhaps all

might have been well. Unluckily panic seized her, and, stamping again

and again, she struggled for her freedom. The fox saw her and began to

stalk anew, for there seemed something uncanny about this rabbit, and

he dared not risk a rush too soon. Cuni forgot her pain, she forgot

her fear and even that desire to live which is so firmly implanted in

each one of the Fur Folk, in her overmastering rage at the thing which

held her. With tooth and claw she attacked the peg round which the

wire was twisted, but the frost had bound it firmly to the snow. Ah! a

last spasmodic jerk wrenched it up, and trailing a broken leg, Cuni

crept into the wall--free. Alas! just the other side she was brought

up with a jerk. The peg was wedged between two stones, and she was as

much a prisoner as ever, although just beyond the fox's reach. She

heard his stealthy pads scrunch on the snow the other side of the

wall, and then he found the hole. He lay down on his side and thrust

his head into the opening; and when he snorted, Cuni felt his hot

breath on her whiskers. He began to whimper eagerly, and scrape at the

loose stones and mortar. He worked his shoulders further and further

in, and the little chamber was filled with dust. Presently he drew

back--his cunning wits had told him of a better way. Just here the

wall was too high to leap, but further down it was lower, and there he

could climb over. Cuni heard his footsteps tiptoe away, and then her

Guardian Angel whispered that her teeth were sharp and pointed out a

way to freedom--but not the cost. She listened to the counsel, for the

desire to live burnt fiercely within her and her leg was twisted and

useless now, a mere encumbrance. There was a short, sharp struggle,

and the snare and its captive were parted indeed. Stiff and numbed,

she crept away among the trees.

Twenty yards further on there was a clearing where the snow lay soft

and deep. Here Fluff-Button's trail could be seen plainly, and the

wide tracks showed that he had crossed it at full gallop. Cuni set out

to follow it, plodding along in the muffling snow, and stumbling into

drifts at every step. The woods were dead--neither Fur nor Feather

Folk stirred--and Fluff-Button's solitary trail alone broke the

blankness before her; but whereas his consisted of four regular

punctures, that which she left beside it had three only, and, in place

of the fourth, a red stain. She dared not pause, for the twilight was

full of a horror which was all the greater that it was nameless and

but dimly realised--the fear of the hunted when strength fails. The

shadows seemed full of shining eyes and crouching forms which would

spring if she lay down, for she did not know that the fox had already

given up the quest, and left her alone.

The snow was soft and deadly cold. It clogged her limbs like so much

clay, and the very air was so chilled that she seemed to draw her

breath in nothingness.

Still Fluff-Button's trail ran forward towards the Pine Tree burrows,

which are warm and deep, and down which no fox can pass; and Cuni

stumbled on blindly, for it is the instinct of the Fur Folk when

maimed or sick to death to seek some hiding-place where not even the

stars can spy upon them.

Presently she fell into a deeper drift, and because she was too tired

to struggle out, she lay still. It was good to rest awhile before

setting out once more, and feel the pain and fear slip away before the

blessed peace which stole over her. The snow now seemed so warm and

dark that she believed herself in the Pine Tree burrows, and nestled

down as contentedly as if she leaned against Fluff-Button's soft coat.

Her nose ceased to quiver as her breath came more and more faintly,

and her big brown eye closed; while her spirit drifted further and

further away, until it silently crossed the borderland into the

country from which there is no return.

A cloud blotted out the moon and wrapped the woods from end to end in

the vast silence of snow. Great flakes as big as pigeon's feathers

floated down into the clearing. The double trail was covered up, and

the drifts piled higher and higher, until not even the tip of a dark

ear peeped out to show where little Cuni lay.

STORIES FROM THE LIFE OF GRIMALKIN THE CAT

[Illustration: STORIES FROM THE LIFE OF GRIMALKIN THE CAT]

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST HUNTING

When it was discovered that the stable-cat had a litter of kittens in

the hayloft, sentence of death was pronounced immediately, and before

noon three little grey corpses floated in the horse pond. The fourth

kitten, _the_ kitten, with whom this history deals, was actually in

the water, when the cook came by and begged for his life in order that

he might later rid the kitchen of mice, in spite of the gardener's

assertion that 'Thim wild cats had a divil in thim as big as an ass,

an' would niver quit ramblin'.' However, in his early days, Grimalkin

showed no signs of any such demoniacal possession. He was a strangely

sedate kitten. Possibly his narrow escape had affected his spirits,

for he spent his days in eating such scraps as came in his way, in

sleeping, and in evading the flying feet of the cook and her

satellites. Hence, for many days his horizon was bounded by the four

walls of the kitchen and the square of backyard, in the corner of

which was the ashpit--to feline ideas the Elysian Fields. The yard was

enclosed by a high wall, and wooden doors shut it off from the outside

world, so that at the time of which I write, Grimalkin had had but

most fleeting glimpses of what lay beyond.

In one place the wall was overhung by a laurel bush, and here the

sparrows used to squabble and chatter all day long, except when now

and then a sinuous black form stole along the coping and dropped into

the yard. This was the farmyard mouser, Sir Charles, a worthy who,

although he possessed a name befitting a Crusader, was nevertheless a

prowler, a poacher, and a buccaneer born and bred. One half of his

time he spent in filching stray morsels from the kitchen and in dozing

in the sun, while the rest of his days were passed--Grimalkin did not

know where. But Paddy Magragh, the earthstopper of Knockdane, could

have told you how often he saw the glossy black form sneaking along

the hedgerows, or 'lying up' beside a rabbit burrow.

About the time that Grimalkin's eyes intensified from their original

pale kitten blue to the yellow of maturer cathood, it happened that

Sir Charles returned from a three weeks' sojourn in the woods. His

coat was sleek and glossy, and comfortable and contented was his face,

as of one who had lived well for some time. The early autumn evening

was drawing in after a still, misty day. Sir Charles squatted by the

ashpit wall; and Grimalkin from the scullery steps noted with

admiration how he drew his supple paw behind his ears after applying

it to his tongue, and how he scientifically smoothed his sooty

waistcoat. Suddenly he ceased his ablutions and gazed fixedly at the

foot of the wall, lashing his tail lightly. Grimalkin, following the

direction of his eyes, saw a tiny grey dot moving among the

cobblestones. The black cat made a dart--springing out and back in two

nimble bounds--then cantered across the yard with it in his mouth. He

dropped it on the stones and watched it scurry for covert, but before

it could reach it he headed it off and struck it with his paw.

Henceforth it ran round in little futile circles as though bewildered,

and every time it scuttled out of striking distance he carried it back

to the middle of the yard. Suddenly he caught sight of Grimalkin,

crouched hard by with his eyes as round as a pigeon's as he watched

this most fascinating game. The veteran breathed a low growl over his

shoulder which made the kitten shrink hastily behind the doorpost; but

the next minute he was peeping out again, staring with all his eyes,

and no wonder, for, for the first time in his life, Grimalkin was

witnessing the death-game which the cat kind play over their 'kill.'

At last the little grey beast would run away no more, but lay still,

gasping; and even when its captor pushed it with his paw it did not

try to escape. The black cat stood up and yawned--the sport was over.

Had it been a rat or a mouse he would have killed it outright and then

feasted--but a shrew! Sir Charles was an old hunter, but since the

long-gone day when he struck down his first rabbit, he had never

tasted a shrew. He strolled away and left it where it lay. No sooner

was his back turned than Grimalkin slipped across the yard and

approached circumspectly. For him so far the animal kingdom had

consisted of three divisions only: cats, men, and cockroaches.

Evidently this was a fourth species, for, although not very much

larger than a cockroach, instead of being rust coloured it was grey,

and its coat was furry like his own.

He touched it stealthily with his paw, but it did not move. Grimalkin

was disappointed. He had liked to see it run about and struggle, and

now it was so still; nevertheless there was something mysteriously

alluring about it, and all unconsciously he began to leap and gambol

round it even as the other cat had done. He gathered it up in his

paws and flung it over his head, leaping after it and shaking it, but

its nose only twitched feebly and it fumbled with its paws. By now it

was nearly dark, and Cook, who had an idea that a cat of any age was

necessarily possessed of a charm to scare away mice, came out to look

for him. For the first time in his life Grimalkin turned and spat at

her, lest she should intend to snatch his treasure from him. Then he

darted with it into the kitchen, and took refuge under the dresser.

'Shure, he has a mouse cot at last,' said Cook, well pleased. She

turned down the light, raked out the fire and left the room, locking

the door behind her. Then Grimalkin crept on to the hearth, carrying

his mouse with him. As a rule he drowsed happily all evening, for then

there was peace in the kitchen, and no fear of heavy felt-shod feet

descending upon his tail. To-night, however, he did not sleep, but sat

and watched the glow of the embers slowly fade beneath a coat of white

ash. Presently a cinder dropped with a crash, and that was a sign for

the cockroaches to come out. They ran to and fro in the shadows, and

the red light turned their wing-cases to copper. Grimalkin often

caught and ate beetles, but to-night he did not look at them, but

wandered restlessly about the room. After one circuit of the walls he

came back to the hearth again. The mouse lay where he had left it, and

a bright red bead had risen among its fur. Grimalkin touched it

stealthily with his tongue. It left a warm saline taste in his

mouth--a taste he had never known before--the taste of fresh blood. He

drew back licking his chops. All at once he felt afraid of this small

still thing; but the taste of the blood mounted to his head like

strong wine. The beetles still ran to and fro upon the hearth, but he

did not look at them. He felt a vague indescribable yearning for

something. He was not cold nor hungry, nor thirsty nor in pain, and

yet he was not comfortable. Grimalkin did not know that it was the

taste of the blood which had awakened this strange indefinable desire

in him; nevertheless it was so, and an instinct was roused which would

make it impossible for him to spend another night between four walls.

The shutter of the window was carelessly fastened, and a sudden

draught of air blew it in. The lower half of the casement was open,

and the night wind bore in the rustle of the trees, and the sough of

the breeze in the laurel bush by the wall--the laurel bush which

formed a bridge from the yard to the woods, across which so many

generations of cats had gone forth to their hunting.

Overhead the skies were cloudy, with here and there a befogged star.

The air swayed by the south wind was hot and heavy. Great moths and

wheeling bats flitted by. From the ash tree the leaves fell now and

then with a patter like a footstep. The woods came up almost to the

doors of the house, and as Grimalkin listened, the piteous scream of a

rabbit close at hand made his whiskers stiffen and his tail move. The

roar of the river over the weir rose and fell, now low now loud, as

the night wind carried it by. Grimalkin uttered an almost inaudible

cry. The Night Longing, that mysterious power which draws all animals,

wild and tame, gripped him. You may hear a dog howling the night-long

by his kennel--the Night Longing which he cannot obey hangs heavy over

his mind. When evening comes the purring tabby dozing by the fire

rises and steals into the cold and darkness without. It is always the

same. Man has taken them and tamed them, worked them and cherished

them, but once in a while the woods call--the woods where their

fathers were born and hunted and died--and they go. It is also certain

that those among men who spend much time alone under the free sky,

feel the Night Longing also, and obey it.