p033.jpgCHAPTER VTHE SHEEP SLAYERThe temptation came late in February, for that is famine time in the country-side. The rabbits were alert, and it was difficult to stalk birds successfully when the leaves were off the trees. In three days Redpad had only picked up a starved rat and a sick pigeon, all skin and bone, and on the fourth day he caught nothing at all. His sides had fallen in, and his haunch bones stood out. At last he went to the moor; but although he hunted there for a long while, he did not even see a field-mouse. The sun had set when he returned to Knockdane, and the stars came out, one by one, in the steely sky. It was going to freeze. Redpad jumped a wall into a little field, where withered fern grew more plentifully than grass, and across which the sheep stampeded. These were the ewes with young lambs, and they wheeled into a jostling flock at his approach. Redpad never looked at them as he skirted the field. He was well used to sheep, but so far, in his opinion, their only use was to foul his line for the hounds. Also, even had he been so minded, he could scarcely pull down a lamb under the hoofs of the dams, for collectively the old ewes were formidable. Thereforehe did not give them a second thought until he came to the far side of the field, when a little cry in the fern made him pause with pad upraised. He snuffed his way cautiously under the wall; and there, sheltered by a boulder from the cold wind, lay a newly dropped lamb. It was one of a couple, but being sickly, it had not risen and followed the dam to the rest of the flock as its fellow did. It was too weak to stand, and could only lie and shiver as the fox crept up. Redpad was ravenous—starving, in fact—and far and near the countryside was empty in the night. The old ewe was not at hand; nothing watched him but the hungry stars overhead. He seized the lamb by the shoulder, and it did not even bleat as he swung it over the wall, and cantered with it to Knockdane. That night, for the first time for many days, Redpad was full-fed, and slept soundly.left-fox.jpgThe theft might have remained undiscovered, but unluckily the sheep belonged to Jack Skehan; and twice a day, during the lambing time, he went along a certain path in Knockdane to visit the flock. The next morning, when on his usual round, his dog ran on ahead, and presently returned carrying the woolly leg of a lamb. On the path were unmistakable traces of Redpad's last night's meal; and worst of all, in the soft earth where hehad drunk from a puddle, were the plain prints of pads. There was no doubt who had done the deed.right-fox.jpgJack Skehan himself was not kindly disposed to the Hunt, and he threw out dark hints as to his future plans. However, he had no opportunity of carrying these into effect, for Redpad did not visit the sheep again after his one theft. What with one thing and another, his luck began to turn. He picked up two or three snared rabbits and other trifles, and the press of famine was over for a time.However, a week later, he was patrolling the fir wood at the top of Knockdane. It was a still night, mild for the season, with a crescent moon struggling behind a mass of little sheep-backed clouds. Presently he heard a businesslike patter of feet on the fir needles, and snuffing, that his nose might confirm his ears in correct fox fashion, he winded a dog. Redpad hated dogs only one degree less than men, and slipped quietly away into the shadows. The footsteps paused undecidedly at the spot where he had turned aside, then passed on.Shortly afterwards, Redpad was scaling the demesne wall, when a distant rumble of hoofs startled him. The ground slopes away gently from theend of the wood, over the fields, and then rises again to meet the moor. Hence, from the wall, Redpad could look down into the field where the sheep dwelt. He saw the whole flock—a grey mass in the twilight—collected in a corner; and listening, it seemed to him that he heard a shrill yelp. However, it was not repeated, and as he winded nothing unusual, for the night air was damp and chilled the scent, he continued his way. Night after night he went to the moor by the same path—over the wall, and across the little field where the sheep grazed among the stones. Here he suddenly crossed a line from which the Fur Folk usually turn—the line of fresh blood; and among the dwarfed gorse he found the body of a young lamb. At that moment the sheep stampeded, and one lamb, breaking from the flock, bounded hither and thither among the rocks with the agility of despair. As it leaped, something small and dark sprang beside it. There was a wicked snarl, a piteous stifled bleat, and the lamb was dragged headlong into the furze. Redpad waited no longer, but cantered back to the wood. If something was worrying the sheep, this was no safe place for him.p037.jpgWhen Jack Skehan came up at eight o'clock,two lambs were missing. He called a conclave of neighbours, and they sat in judgment upon Redpad's real and supposed delinquencies. Jack Skehan, who was very wrathful, purposed to put a notice to 'foxhunters and others' in the local press, and resort to drastic measures by means of strychnine; but the rest of the council shook their heads, for they had no wish to banish the hounds from Knockdane. Ultimately they all went down to consult Paddy Magragh, whose reputation for wisdom was deservedly great where animals were concerned. Paddy was smoking in his cabin, and after he had heard all that they had to say, he said: ''Twas a dog, not a fox, took the lamb lasht night, I'm thinking.' And this opinion he held to in spite of all arguments against it.Nothing occurred that night, and the following day Paddy Magragh went alone to the field on the hill, and searched it thoroughly. He came upon the carcase of the lamb in the gorse, and he grinned, for he knew the ways of the Fur Folk, and their law, better than most of the men round Knockdane. The next day, however, there was great consternation. Jack Skehan's flock was untouched, but Dinny Purcell had left his ewes in a field adjoining the wood, and a young lamb lay torn and draggled upon the grass. The remainswere taken triumphantly to Paddy Magragh, and the foxlike print of the fangs displayed; and secretly even his conviction was shaken, although he declared stoutly that it was a dog and not a fox that had done the deed.With one accord it was decreed that poison should be laid down; and Jack Skehan went to Skelagh and bought strychnine, ostensibly to poison rats. Paddy Magragh had manfully opposed this scheme, for besides the fact that every fox hunted from Knockdane meant ten shillings in his pocket, he had 'stopped' the woods for twenty years, and took more pride in his foxes than he cared to own.'If ye'll do as I tell ye,' he declared, 'ye'll lay the mate on a bit o' paper, an' if it's a fox, he'll never touch it at all, for he'd be afeard o' the paper, but if it's a dog he'll ate it.'And this was the utmost they would grant him. Indeed, if they had believed him, he could not even have extorted this concession.p039.jpgThey 'doctored' some rabbit paunches with strychnine cunningly enough, and laid them seductively in the field. It was just before dark when they returned home, so they did not see how the magpie fluttered down a few minutes later, and spying the bait, sidled up to it. He did notaltogether like the white paper, but he was hungry, and a paunch was a paunch. He picked it up gingerly and carried it off, for a magpie does not care to eat where he has killed—he is too accustomed to traps. Even an egg is impaled on his bill and conveyed away. Luckily for this magpie, however, it so happened that when he was flying into the wood he accidentally let the choice morsel fall out of sight among the trees. Therefore, although he went supperless to bed, he was fortunate in that he roosted in the branches that night, instead of lying claws upwards on the ground. Redpad found that paunch two days afterwards and ate a piece; but something peculiar about the morsel—in its taste or odour—warned him, and although he was very sick for some hours, yet he eventually recovered.There was great jubilation the next morning when it was found that some of the poison had been taken; but the triumph was short-lived, for the following night another lamb had disappeared. The next evening Jack Skehan took his old gun and the little whippet-nosed dog who worked for him among the sheep all day, and sat up to watch. The dog sat beside him on a stone, and when he was not watching his master for orders, he gazed serenely above the heads of the sheep. Nothing, however,came, and at six o'clock, tired and chilled, Jack Skehan went home.The poison was still there, but Redpad, made wary by his former experience with the rabbit paunch, passed it by, and besides, the mysterious rustling of the white paper underneath scared him. The real sheep slayer never touched it, for he seemed to prefer warm meat to cold.On the two following nights again nothing was taken; but on the third morning news was brought that an older lamb had been killed in Jack Skehan's flock, and that the carcase had not been removed, so Paddy Magragh went up to the field.'Bedam! I'll have the poison thick in every field on the farm, and put up the wire besides,' stormed Jack Skehan. 'Is al' me sheep to be worried on me that the gintry may hunt their dirthy foxes over me land? I'll have ivery mother's son o' thim prosecuted.''Now I'll go bail,' said Paddy Magragh, who had picked up the carcase, 'that 'twas a dog had this killed.''An' what dog in this counthry would touch a sheep, an' they wid 'em all day?' demanded Garry, Jack Skehan's young brother.'Where have ye that felly o' yours shut at nights?' asked Paddy Magragh, looking at thelittle narrow-headed cur who slunk at Skehan's heel.'Shure he slapes in the cowhouse, and I lets him out in the mornin'. But he'd never harm a sheep—I rared him meself.'Paddy Magragh spat discreetly. 'I'd have me cowhouse door mended, an' the window blocked,' said he.'Are ye sayin' that it was a dog all the while?' demanded Skehan irately.'I do not. Maybe 'twas a fox took one or two—the first was a little small one, an' he sick-like. But this is a dog, shure enough.' And he looked again at Jack Skehan's sheep-dog, who was licking his paws thoughtfully.'Well, I'll have the poison down again, an' that widout the paper. Shure there's enough o' talkin'. If there's another lamb worried on me, begob, but I'll poison every fox in Knockdane,' grumbled Jack Skehan.Paddy Magragh said nothing, for he was crafty, and the Knockdane foxes were near to his heart and his pocket, but that night, after the bait had been laid, he went to the field, and, taking the carcase of the dead lamb, he put in enough strychnine to poison a dozen dogs or foxes either, and left it by the gate.'It's a bit o' a risk,' he mumbled, 'but shure, if I don't have the right lad cot to-night, Jack Skehan is that bitther with the Hunt he'll not lave a fox in the woods, what wid the traps an' the poison.'That night the hunger pain hurt Redpad sorely again; and if he had reflected upon the subject, he might have envied the squirrels, who, during that hard March weather, eked out a living upon germinating beechmast, or the badgers who dug up and ate the acrid tubers of the wild arum. But the Fur Folk do not possess the faculty of comparing their own lot with that of others. Perhaps they are all the happier that they lack it.p043.jpgIt was after midnight, and the moon was not long risen, when Redpad trotted by the gate of the field where the sheep were. He had no idea of taking a lamb. They were all able to run well by now, and he had too much respect for the hoofs of the old ewes to attack the entire flock. He crept under the gate (there be those who say that a fox will not do this, but the hedgerow rabbits whom the fox stalks know better) and then he found the carcase of the lamb. His recent experience with the rabbit paunch had made him wary, otherwise he might have eaten of it, for he was very hungry; but to his sharp senses something seemednot altogether right—perhaps the taint of human hands was still upon the food—and he passed on. For two hours he hunted in the fields, but the meagre results only whetted his appetite. Then he recollected the dead lamb, and desire for one full meal overcame his caution, and he returned to the place.The moon, which had been obscured by sullen clouds, here brightened a little, and he caught sight of the lamb's carcase in the fern, gleaming in the dusk. He was hurrying up to it, when suddenly, by a wandering night breeze, he winded dog, and at the same instant the clouds broke entirely from the moon. Redpad stood petrified, for not thirty yards away, his back turned and his foot on the dead lamb, crouched Jack Skehan's tried sheep-dog. He looked up, and snarled at the sheep who stared fearfully at him. Evidently he was devouring his last night's kill, before attacking the flock. As Redpad watched, the dog tore off a mouthful and swallowed it. Then he growled again, and Redpad slunk silently away. The dog was lightly built, and smaller than he was, but he was thin and weak, and in no condition to fight. The Fur Folk seldom contest a kill, and besides, in Redpad's mind, dogs were so intimately connected with men that he was by no means certain that a man mightnot lurk under the wall. But as he went there was a half-strangled, hysterical yell behind him. The dog suddenly leaped up, and rushed madly towards the gate, as though in his terror his first instinct was to run home. His agonised eyes, fear-stricken, glinted white in the moonlight, and there was foam on his jowl. Redpad took the wall in one bound, but as he sprang he heard a dull thud, as the dog, leaping blindly in the extremity of his frenzy, struck the top bar of the gate, and fell back struggling convulsively.Redpad ran as he had seldom run before, for he believed that the other pursued him, and that the mysterious madness would be upon him too if he were overtaken. But the hideous sounds which tore the silence of the night behind gradually grew fainter, and before he had crossed the demesne wall the dog lay still and stiff beside the torn lamb. There Paddy Magragh found him at dawn, and went home chuckling; and there also, a little later, his owner found him, and buried him secretly in the corner of a turnip field.For obvious reasons Jack Skehan did not publish the story of that night abroad; but in the country round it was noticed ever after that his lambing ewes were kept in the home-field; and also that from this time onwards he ceased tobe accompanied everywhere by his favourite dog. Until recently, indeed, the identity of the sheep killer was only known to three persons—to Skehan himself, who never divulged it; to Paddy Magragh, who kept the secret faithfully, and only revealed it long afterwards in order, on another occasion, to clear the name of the foxes of Knockdane; and lastly to Redpad. But for a long while the latter avoided the place; for in his memory dwelt the recollection of that strange death which men deal to those who break the primitive law which ordains that man is placed in dominion, not only over the beasts who eat his bread, but over the Wild Folk of the hills and woods, and that his dependents and possessions are sacred, and not to be harmed with impunity.p046.jpgCHAPTER VIFROM KILMANAGH TO KNOCKDANEFrom 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 hfox. 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 andheather tuft was visible, and the faces of the limestone boulders glistened with rime.left-fox.jpgA 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.right-fox.jpgTo-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 hisloneliness 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.'Yap! yap! yap!' shrilly and insistently Redpad, silhouetted against the moon, yelped a love song and challenge in one.LONELINESS AND LONGINGLONELINESS AND LONGINGFrom 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 thesloping shoulders of Kilmanagh, and to fox eyes the hill was light. Here his quest ended, for not six yards from him sat the Belovèd. 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 Belovèd 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 Belovèd 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 Belovèd 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 whenRedpad and his love came back up the hill, full-fed and contented. The Belovèd 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 Belovèd. 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 Belovèd, 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 Belovèd'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 Belovèd 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 upthe 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 Belovèd 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 ofcondition 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 sheepstampeded. 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 floodpools 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 dismountedfrom 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.p059.jpgTHE STORY OF FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBITCHAPTER IHOW FLUFF-BUTTON CRIED QUITSA 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.left-rabbit.jpgThere were a score of sheep in the field, andeach 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.right-rabbit.jpgIn 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 wetgrass, 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 onthe 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 rabbitstook 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, itwould 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 bornknowing 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 sawFluff-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 hislove 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.
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THE SHEEP SLAYER
The temptation came late in February, for that is famine time in the country-side. The rabbits were alert, and it was difficult to stalk birds successfully when the leaves were off the trees. In three days Redpad had only picked up a starved rat and a sick pigeon, all skin and bone, and on the fourth day he caught nothing at all. His sides had fallen in, and his haunch bones stood out. At last he went to the moor; but although he hunted there for a long while, he did not even see a field-mouse. The sun had set when he returned to Knockdane, and the stars came out, one by one, in the steely sky. It was going to freeze. Redpad jumped a wall into a little field, where withered fern grew more plentifully than grass, and across which the sheep stampeded. These were the ewes with young lambs, and they wheeled into a jostling flock at his approach. Redpad never looked at them as he skirted the field. He was well used to sheep, but so far, in his opinion, their only use was to foul his line for the hounds. Also, even had he been so minded, he could scarcely pull down a lamb under the hoofs of the dams, for collectively the old ewes were formidable. Thereforehe did not give them a second thought until he came to the far side of the field, when a little cry in the fern made him pause with pad upraised. He snuffed his way cautiously under the wall; and there, sheltered by a boulder from the cold wind, lay a newly dropped lamb. It was one of a couple, but being sickly, it had not risen and followed the dam to the rest of the flock as its fellow did. It was too weak to stand, and could only lie and shiver as the fox crept up. Redpad was ravenous—starving, in fact—and far and near the countryside was empty in the night. The old ewe was not at hand; nothing watched him but the hungry stars overhead. He seized the lamb by the shoulder, and it did not even bleat as he swung it over the wall, and cantered with it to Knockdane. That night, for the first time for many days, Redpad was full-fed, and slept soundly.
The theft might have remained undiscovered, but unluckily the sheep belonged to Jack Skehan; and twice a day, during the lambing time, he went along a certain path in Knockdane to visit the flock. The next morning, when on his usual round, his dog ran on ahead, and presently returned carrying the woolly leg of a lamb. On the path were unmistakable traces of Redpad's last night's meal; and worst of all, in the soft earth where hehad drunk from a puddle, were the plain prints of pads. There was no doubt who had done the deed.
Jack Skehan himself was not kindly disposed to the Hunt, and he threw out dark hints as to his future plans. However, he had no opportunity of carrying these into effect, for Redpad did not visit the sheep again after his one theft. What with one thing and another, his luck began to turn. He picked up two or three snared rabbits and other trifles, and the press of famine was over for a time.
However, a week later, he was patrolling the fir wood at the top of Knockdane. It was a still night, mild for the season, with a crescent moon struggling behind a mass of little sheep-backed clouds. Presently he heard a businesslike patter of feet on the fir needles, and snuffing, that his nose might confirm his ears in correct fox fashion, he winded a dog. Redpad hated dogs only one degree less than men, and slipped quietly away into the shadows. The footsteps paused undecidedly at the spot where he had turned aside, then passed on.
Shortly afterwards, Redpad was scaling the demesne wall, when a distant rumble of hoofs startled him. The ground slopes away gently from theend of the wood, over the fields, and then rises again to meet the moor. Hence, from the wall, Redpad could look down into the field where the sheep dwelt. He saw the whole flock—a grey mass in the twilight—collected in a corner; and listening, it seemed to him that he heard a shrill yelp. However, it was not repeated, and as he winded nothing unusual, for the night air was damp and chilled the scent, he continued his way. Night after night he went to the moor by the same path—over the wall, and across the little field where the sheep grazed among the stones. Here he suddenly crossed a line from which the Fur Folk usually turn—the line of fresh blood; and among the dwarfed gorse he found the body of a young lamb. At that moment the sheep stampeded, and one lamb, breaking from the flock, bounded hither and thither among the rocks with the agility of despair. As it leaped, something small and dark sprang beside it. There was a wicked snarl, a piteous stifled bleat, and the lamb was dragged headlong into the furze. Redpad waited no longer, but cantered back to the wood. If something was worrying the sheep, this was no safe place for him.
When Jack Skehan came up at eight o'clock,two lambs were missing. He called a conclave of neighbours, and they sat in judgment upon Redpad's real and supposed delinquencies. Jack Skehan, who was very wrathful, purposed to put a notice to 'foxhunters and others' in the local press, and resort to drastic measures by means of strychnine; but the rest of the council shook their heads, for they had no wish to banish the hounds from Knockdane. Ultimately they all went down to consult Paddy Magragh, whose reputation for wisdom was deservedly great where animals were concerned. Paddy was smoking in his cabin, and after he had heard all that they had to say, he said: ''Twas a dog, not a fox, took the lamb lasht night, I'm thinking.' And this opinion he held to in spite of all arguments against it.
Nothing occurred that night, and the following day Paddy Magragh went alone to the field on the hill, and searched it thoroughly. He came upon the carcase of the lamb in the gorse, and he grinned, for he knew the ways of the Fur Folk, and their law, better than most of the men round Knockdane. The next day, however, there was great consternation. Jack Skehan's flock was untouched, but Dinny Purcell had left his ewes in a field adjoining the wood, and a young lamb lay torn and draggled upon the grass. The remainswere taken triumphantly to Paddy Magragh, and the foxlike print of the fangs displayed; and secretly even his conviction was shaken, although he declared stoutly that it was a dog and not a fox that had done the deed.
With one accord it was decreed that poison should be laid down; and Jack Skehan went to Skelagh and bought strychnine, ostensibly to poison rats. Paddy Magragh had manfully opposed this scheme, for besides the fact that every fox hunted from Knockdane meant ten shillings in his pocket, he had 'stopped' the woods for twenty years, and took more pride in his foxes than he cared to own.
'If ye'll do as I tell ye,' he declared, 'ye'll lay the mate on a bit o' paper, an' if it's a fox, he'll never touch it at all, for he'd be afeard o' the paper, but if it's a dog he'll ate it.'
And this was the utmost they would grant him. Indeed, if they had believed him, he could not even have extorted this concession.
They 'doctored' some rabbit paunches with strychnine cunningly enough, and laid them seductively in the field. It was just before dark when they returned home, so they did not see how the magpie fluttered down a few minutes later, and spying the bait, sidled up to it. He did notaltogether like the white paper, but he was hungry, and a paunch was a paunch. He picked it up gingerly and carried it off, for a magpie does not care to eat where he has killed—he is too accustomed to traps. Even an egg is impaled on his bill and conveyed away. Luckily for this magpie, however, it so happened that when he was flying into the wood he accidentally let the choice morsel fall out of sight among the trees. Therefore, although he went supperless to bed, he was fortunate in that he roosted in the branches that night, instead of lying claws upwards on the ground. Redpad found that paunch two days afterwards and ate a piece; but something peculiar about the morsel—in its taste or odour—warned him, and although he was very sick for some hours, yet he eventually recovered.
There was great jubilation the next morning when it was found that some of the poison had been taken; but the triumph was short-lived, for the following night another lamb had disappeared. The next evening Jack Skehan took his old gun and the little whippet-nosed dog who worked for him among the sheep all day, and sat up to watch. The dog sat beside him on a stone, and when he was not watching his master for orders, he gazed serenely above the heads of the sheep. Nothing, however,came, and at six o'clock, tired and chilled, Jack Skehan went home.
The poison was still there, but Redpad, made wary by his former experience with the rabbit paunch, passed it by, and besides, the mysterious rustling of the white paper underneath scared him. The real sheep slayer never touched it, for he seemed to prefer warm meat to cold.
On the two following nights again nothing was taken; but on the third morning news was brought that an older lamb had been killed in Jack Skehan's flock, and that the carcase had not been removed, so Paddy Magragh went up to the field.
'Bedam! I'll have the poison thick in every field on the farm, and put up the wire besides,' stormed Jack Skehan. 'Is al' me sheep to be worried on me that the gintry may hunt their dirthy foxes over me land? I'll have ivery mother's son o' thim prosecuted.'
'Now I'll go bail,' said Paddy Magragh, who had picked up the carcase, 'that 'twas a dog had this killed.'
'An' what dog in this counthry would touch a sheep, an' they wid 'em all day?' demanded Garry, Jack Skehan's young brother.
'Where have ye that felly o' yours shut at nights?' asked Paddy Magragh, looking at thelittle narrow-headed cur who slunk at Skehan's heel.
'Shure he slapes in the cowhouse, and I lets him out in the mornin'. But he'd never harm a sheep—I rared him meself.'
Paddy Magragh spat discreetly. 'I'd have me cowhouse door mended, an' the window blocked,' said he.
'Are ye sayin' that it was a dog all the while?' demanded Skehan irately.
'I do not. Maybe 'twas a fox took one or two—the first was a little small one, an' he sick-like. But this is a dog, shure enough.' And he looked again at Jack Skehan's sheep-dog, who was licking his paws thoughtfully.
'Well, I'll have the poison down again, an' that widout the paper. Shure there's enough o' talkin'. If there's another lamb worried on me, begob, but I'll poison every fox in Knockdane,' grumbled Jack Skehan.
Paddy Magragh said nothing, for he was crafty, and the Knockdane foxes were near to his heart and his pocket, but that night, after the bait had been laid, he went to the field, and, taking the carcase of the dead lamb, he put in enough strychnine to poison a dozen dogs or foxes either, and left it by the gate.
'It's a bit o' a risk,' he mumbled, 'but shure, if I don't have the right lad cot to-night, Jack Skehan is that bitther with the Hunt he'll not lave a fox in the woods, what wid the traps an' the poison.'
That night the hunger pain hurt Redpad sorely again; and if he had reflected upon the subject, he might have envied the squirrels, who, during that hard March weather, eked out a living upon germinating beechmast, or the badgers who dug up and ate the acrid tubers of the wild arum. But the Fur Folk do not possess the faculty of comparing their own lot with that of others. Perhaps they are all the happier that they lack it.
It was after midnight, and the moon was not long risen, when Redpad trotted by the gate of the field where the sheep were. He had no idea of taking a lamb. They were all able to run well by now, and he had too much respect for the hoofs of the old ewes to attack the entire flock. He crept under the gate (there be those who say that a fox will not do this, but the hedgerow rabbits whom the fox stalks know better) and then he found the carcase of the lamb. His recent experience with the rabbit paunch had made him wary, otherwise he might have eaten of it, for he was very hungry; but to his sharp senses something seemednot altogether right—perhaps the taint of human hands was still upon the food—and he passed on. For two hours he hunted in the fields, but the meagre results only whetted his appetite. Then he recollected the dead lamb, and desire for one full meal overcame his caution, and he returned to the place.
The moon, which had been obscured by sullen clouds, here brightened a little, and he caught sight of the lamb's carcase in the fern, gleaming in the dusk. He was hurrying up to it, when suddenly, by a wandering night breeze, he winded dog, and at the same instant the clouds broke entirely from the moon. Redpad stood petrified, for not thirty yards away, his back turned and his foot on the dead lamb, crouched Jack Skehan's tried sheep-dog. He looked up, and snarled at the sheep who stared fearfully at him. Evidently he was devouring his last night's kill, before attacking the flock. As Redpad watched, the dog tore off a mouthful and swallowed it. Then he growled again, and Redpad slunk silently away. The dog was lightly built, and smaller than he was, but he was thin and weak, and in no condition to fight. The Fur Folk seldom contest a kill, and besides, in Redpad's mind, dogs were so intimately connected with men that he was by no means certain that a man mightnot lurk under the wall. But as he went there was a half-strangled, hysterical yell behind him. The dog suddenly leaped up, and rushed madly towards the gate, as though in his terror his first instinct was to run home. His agonised eyes, fear-stricken, glinted white in the moonlight, and there was foam on his jowl. Redpad took the wall in one bound, but as he sprang he heard a dull thud, as the dog, leaping blindly in the extremity of his frenzy, struck the top bar of the gate, and fell back struggling convulsively.
Redpad ran as he had seldom run before, for he believed that the other pursued him, and that the mysterious madness would be upon him too if he were overtaken. But the hideous sounds which tore the silence of the night behind gradually grew fainter, and before he had crossed the demesne wall the dog lay still and stiff beside the torn lamb. There Paddy Magragh found him at dawn, and went home chuckling; and there also, a little later, his owner found him, and buried him secretly in the corner of a turnip field.
For obvious reasons Jack Skehan did not publish the story of that night abroad; but in the country round it was noticed ever after that his lambing ewes were kept in the home-field; and also that from this time onwards he ceased tobe accompanied everywhere by his favourite dog. Until recently, indeed, the identity of the sheep killer was only known to three persons—to Skehan himself, who never divulged it; to Paddy Magragh, who kept the secret faithfully, and only revealed it long afterwards in order, on another occasion, to clear the name of the foxes of Knockdane; and lastly to Redpad. But for a long while the latter avoided the place; for in his memory dwelt the recollection of that strange death which men deal to those who break the primitive law which ordains that man is placed in dominion, not only over the beasts who eat his bread, but over the Wild Folk of the hills and woods, and that his dependents and possessions are sacred, and not to be harmed with impunity.
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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 hfox. 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 andheather 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 hisloneliness 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.
'Yap! yap! yap!' shrilly and insistently Redpad, silhouetted against the moon, yelped a love song and challenge in one.
LONELINESS AND LONGING
LONELINESS AND LONGING
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 thesloping shoulders of Kilmanagh, and to fox eyes the hill was light. Here his quest ended, for not six yards from him sat the Belovèd. 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 Belovèd 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 Belovèd 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 Belovèd 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 whenRedpad and his love came back up the hill, full-fed and contented. The Belovèd 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 Belovèd. 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 Belovèd, 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 Belovèd'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 Belovèd 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 upthe 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 Belovèd 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!'
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 Belovèd 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 upthe 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 Belovèd 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 ofcondition 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.
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 ofcondition 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.
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.
[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 sheepstampeded. 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 floodpools 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 dismountedfrom 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.'
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 floodpools 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 dismountedfrom 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.
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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.left-rabbit.jpgThere were a score of sheep in the field, andeach 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.right-rabbit.jpgIn 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 wetgrass, and the field resounded with the incessant bleating of the lambs who ran to a strange ewe and were butted aside.
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, andeach 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 wetgrass, 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 onthe 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 rabbitstook 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, itwould 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 bornknowing 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.
That was the first time that White-Lamb saw Fluff-Button the Rabbit, and but for his happy instinct to baa for his mother, itwould 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 bornknowing 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 sawFluff-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 hislove 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.