Lives of the Fur Folk Part 5

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 pa.s.sage, 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage. Something small and wiry beneath her paws squealed and snapped. Cuni darted up the pa.s.sage stamping wildly--it was a rat.

By this time the rest of the rabbits were awake and rus.h.i.+ng 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-b.u.t.ton, 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-b.u.t.ton 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-b.u.t.ton'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-b.u.t.ton 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 s.p.a.ce, 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-b.u.t.ton 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-b.u.t.ton 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-b.u.t.ton 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-b.u.t.ton 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-b.u.t.ton 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 pa.s.sage, 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 a.s.sailants and held her body as a living s.h.i.+eld 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 pa.s.sage--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 appet.i.te whetted, pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 a.s.sembled. 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 l.u.s.t 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-b.u.t.ton'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 pa.s.sages 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-b.u.t.ton 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 ma.s.s, 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 gra.s.s; but when the fourth appeared, Brownie sat up, and her nose worked as fast as the 'quaking gra.s.s' 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 acc.u.mulated 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 gra.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 b.u.t.terflies, daisies, and the dainty milkweed, all growing so close together that the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 b.u.mble 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 gra.s.s--a perfect forest peopled with strange beasts--all around them. Brownie was ravenous, and the young ones, watching her tear off gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 b.u.t.tercups, 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 gra.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed into the distance. A broody blackbird 'c.h.i.n.ked' 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 circ.u.mstances 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 woodc.o.c.k, playing in the dusk, 'chissicked' as they wheeled overhead. That night, for the first time, the White Rabbit ate gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s in broad daylight.

The field was purple with ripening gra.s.ses, 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 gra.s.shoppers a.s.siduously polished their shanks.

Suddenly, in the suns.h.i.+ne-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 c.o.c.kfoot gra.s.s. The cat, at fault, made short excited rushes. .h.i.ther 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-gra.s.s tastes better than either the c.o.c.kfoot 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 vanis.h.i.+ng 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 fl.u.s.ter. 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing through it; hence the increased awfulness of the apparition of the ghost-rabbit on the moss cus.h.i.+on. 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--superst.i.tion. 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 compa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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, pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.shopper. 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 repet.i.tion of their doings early in the year. The rabbits wandered away from their burrows, and made desultory sc.r.a.pings 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 pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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.