suddenly turned her mask and scrutinised the ground in the hope of catching the hare with head raised watching her retreat; but bush, rock, and frond alone met her roving eyes. Near the Giant’s Bowl she again looked back, and by the expression on her face, now vindictive rather than perplexed, seemed to say: “Wily one, you’ve beaten me this dawn, but I’ll lick my chops over you yet, both you and your tender young ones.” Then, the rumble of wheels urging her, she hurried away, her beautiful coat all aripple with the play of her lissom limbs. As soon as she had crossed the wall, the hare, who had observed her from behind the blades, resumed the suckling of her frightened young, fondling them as she had never done before.

It had been a narrow escape, and the hare was now all impatience to forsake the hill. But that could not be before nightfall, so she and the leverets spent the long day unnerved by the rank scent left by the fox on the herbage. The slow sun at last sank beneath the sea. At once the hare took the doe leveret in her mouth and carried it along the southern flank of the chain for more than a mile to the foot of Bartinney, where she laid it in a patch of bracken bordering a little green. The next moment she was on her way back at her best pace, as though she dreaded that the vixen might forestall her. But no enemy was to be seen: the jack was as she had left him. Seizing him by the skin of the neck she bore him rapidly along despite his kicking, crouching whilst two stoats passed, dropping him thrice to rest herself, and finally depositing him in a clump of rushes by a rill some score yards from his sister. It was not without a reason that she laid them on opposite sides of the green, for by thus separating them she hoped that at least one might escape detection in the event of a visit from an enemy.

On collecting himself after his strange experience, the jack sat and listened to the music of the water, whilst through an opening in the rushes his eyes scanned the green, whose close velvety sward seemed to cry aloud to be gambolled on. There, so the country people aver, the fairies forgather to hold high revel on the inviting turf, tripping to the tinkling of the falls, in the dark-green ring lighted by innumerable glow-worms. No little folk appeared that night, however; nothing in fact came near until the hare returned to attend to her young, before vanishing like the wraith she seemed and ensconcing herself in some brambles on the lip of the green.

She had not been there long when a magpie left his resting-place in the hawthorn overhanging the turf and stood preening his feathers on the topmost spray. Presently, his quick eyes noted the marks left by the hare’s pads on the dewy surface, and examined them searchingly as if to learn the identity of the trespasser. He imagined that a badger or a fox had made them; the thought that a hare—he had only seen one—had crossed the green never entered his head, much less that a family of hares was at that moment lying hidden around it. The inquisitive bird was soon joined by his mate, and after a little chatter he flew away with her towards a homestead from which the smoke was just beginning to rise. They alighted on the elder-tree springing from the wall of the rickyard, the white of their plumage very conspicuous in the bright level rays which lit them up and fired the dormer-window of the thatched roof beyond. By and by they dropped into the yard, where amongst the straw they found an egg. They broke and ate it. Then the hen-bird came flying back in great haste to the nest, as if she feared her precious clutch might be chilled and become addled. Later the cock-bird returned to tell her what was happening in the farmyard, and at once flew back to the elder. He was back again in half an hour: indeed he kept flying to and fro until sundown. The hare rejoiced in the restlessness of this arch-mobber of vermin: it gave her a sense of security such as she had not felt since the birth of her young. For her the magpie was an untiring patrol, and further, one gifted with a tongue that would make the boldest fox shrink from the insults it was capable of raining on him. Her fears fled in the presence of this sentinel of the wild, so that for a few minutes during the afternoon she actually fell asleep. “If only there were some night-bird to watch over us,” she thought while she sat awaiting dusk. And as soon as darkness fell an owl began hooting. At once, as if she took it for a signal, she stole from the form to attend to her young.

Her visit was most welcome to the jack, who was very sorry when she withdrew. He listened to her retreating steps, and as they died away tried to combat the feeling of loneliness that beset him. In the weary watch that followed he sorely missed the companion of his waking hours. He felt forlorn without her soft, warm side to nestle against; but in a night or two he found something to occupy him. He took to grooming himself, and off and on spent hours brushing his ears and licking his coat, especially the snow-white fur on his belly, which had looked so ghostly as his mother bore him through the dusk. He made himself as clean as a pink, and when the feeling of isolation wore off, as it soon did, he felt as happy as a strong, healthy leveret could feel. Soon, however, his muscles began to ache for want of exercise: they kept urging him to throw aside his fears and break his narrow bounds; but night after night he resisted the impulse. At last inaction became unendurable. Regardless of his mother’s monitions and the whispers of instinct, he leapt the rill and raced about the moonlit green like a thing possessed.

Instantly he was joined by his sister, and never perhaps did two leverets enjoy their stolen freedom more. They bounded over each other’s back; they leapt the rock by the thorn, clearing it by a good foot; they galloped round and round like performers in a circus. Tiring of this, they rose on their hind legs and sparred with their pads, moving about the fairy ring and patting each other’s face like boxers. But whilst they were thus engaged the snapping of a brier disturbed the night and sent them to their seats. With wildly beating hearts they sat till the clumsy badger who had trodden on the spray passed out of hearing; then out they came again and renewed their frolics, which lasted without further interruption till the moon began to pale.

Their mother found them in their seats looking as innocent as could be; but she knew of their escapade from the scent on the green and, recognising in this bid for liberty a token that the time was come for leading them out, she resolved to devote herself to this duty without further delay. So the following night, instead of returning at early dawn, she hurried back in the small hours and surprised the culprits, not, as she expected, in the midst of their games, but nibbling the grass of the green. At the sight of their mother the guilty creatures scurried to their forms, only to bound out at her summons and follow frisking at her heels as she led past the spring to the hill. She breasted the slope at a slow canter, but soon quickened her steps. Half-way up she began doubling, the leverets imitating her twists and turns in a surprising way and with astonishing exactness. Towards daybreak, however, they flagged, and by the time they got back to the green they were so tired that they were content to remain in the form till the hour for exercise came round again.

The hare returned nightly at almost the same moment, and went farther and farther afield