Chapter 12

Except during harvest, the cornfield is seldom visited by the country folk. It lies away from the main road, and the nearest approach to it is by a grass-grown lane leading from some ruined cottages to a farmstead in the middle of the estate. Many years ago, it was a wilderness of furze and briar, one of the thickest coverts on the countryside, affording safe sanctuary for fox and badger. But gradually it has been reclaimed, till now only a belt of undergrowth, scarcely twenty yards wide, stretches along the horizon between the upper hedgerow and the wheat.

Here, one starry April night, in a snug "form" prepared by the mother hare, a leveret was born. The "form" was hardly more than a depression in the rank grass, to which, for some time past, the doe had been in the habit of resorting at dawn, that she might hide secure through the day, till the dusk brought with it renewed confidence, and tempted her away into the open meadows beyond the cornfield, where the young clover grew green and succulent. A thick gorse-bush, decked with a wealth of yellow bloom, grew by the side of the "form," and, all around, the matted grass and brambles made a labyrinth, pathless, save for the winding "run" by which the hare approached or left her home.

Unlike the offspring of the rabbit--born blind and naked in an underground nest lined with its parent's fur--the leveret was covered with down, and her eyes were open, from the hour of birth. Nature had fitted her for an existence in the open air. At first she was suckled by day as well as by night, but as she grew older she seldom felt the want of food till dark. While light remained, she squatted motionless by her mother's side in the "form," protected by the resemblance in colour between her coat and the surrounding herbage, where the browns and greys of last autumn might still be seen among the brambles, with here and there a weather-worn stone or the fresh castings from a field-vole's burrow. In the gloaming, she followed her mother through the "creeps" amid the furze-brake, and sometimes to the edge of the thicket as far as the gap, where she learned to nibble the tastiest leaves in the grass. But soon after nightfall, she was generally alone for some hours while the doe wandered in search of food.

Before daybreak, the doe always returned to suckle her little one. Often in the quiet night, the leveret, feeling lonely or afraid, would call in a low, tremulous voice for help. If the doe was within hearing she immediately responded; but frequently the cry, "leek, leek," did not reach the roaming hare, and the leveret, crouching in the undergrowth, had to wait till she heard her mother's welcome call. Soon the little home in the thicket was deserted, and the leveret accompanied her mother on her nightly journeys till the fields and the woods for miles around became familiar.

About a month after her birth, the leveret, having grown so rapidly that she was able to take care of herself, parted from her mother, and, crossing the boundary hedge of the estate, took up her quarters on the opposite side of the valley. The doe and her leveret had lived happily in the cornfield and the meadows above the wood. The mother had attended with utmost solicitude to the wants of her offspring, allowing no intruder among her kindred to trespass on her own particular haunts, and careful to select for each day's hiding place some sequestered spot where a human footstep was seldom heard, and the noise of the farmyard sounded faint and remote.

The leveret had learned, partly through a wonderful instinct and partly through her mother's teaching, how to act when there was cause for alarm. Immediately on detecting the presence of an intruder, she lay as still as the stone beside the ant-heap near, trusting that she would not be distinguished from her surroundings. But if flight was absolutely necessary, she sped away towards the nearest gap, and thence over pasture and cornfield, always up-hill if possible, out-distancing any probable pursuer by the marvellous power of her long hind-limbs.

During the late summer and the early autumn, nothing occurred to endanger the leveret's life. The corn grew tall and slowly ripened. Amid its cool shadows the leveret dwelt in solitude. Her "creeps" were out of sight beneath the arching stalks. A gutter for winter drainage, dry and overgrown with grass, formed a tunnel in the hedge-bank between the corn and the root-crop field beyond; and through this gutter the leveret, when at night she grew hungry, could steal into the dense tangle of thistles and nettles fringing the turnips, thence, between the ridges under the wide-spreading leaves, to the narrow pathway dividing the rape from the root-crop, and across the field to a furrow where sweet red carrots, topped with dew-sprinkled plumes, tempted her dainty appetite.

When the calm night was illumined, but not too brightly, by the moon and stars, the leveret would venture far away from her retreat to visit a cottage garden where the young lettuces were crisp and tender. Her depredations among the carrots and lettuces were scarcely such as to deserve punishment. She ate only enough of the lettuces to make a slight difference in the number of seeding plants ultimately devoured by the cottager's pig, or thrown to the refuse-heap; and from the great pile of carrots, to be gathered and stored in the peat-mound by the farmstead, the few she destroyed could never by any chance be missed. On all the countryside she was the most inoffensive creature--the harmless gipsy of the animal world, having no fixed abode, her tent-roof being the dome of the sky.

As autumn advanced, the reapers came to the corn. She heard them enter by the gate; and presently, along the broad path cut by the scythe around the field, the great machine clanked and whirred. All day the strange, disturbing noise continued, drawing gradually nearer the spot where the leveret lay. Through the spaces between the stalks she watched the whirling arms swinging over, and the horses plodding leisurely by the edge of the standing wheat. At last, but almost too late, she leaped from her "form" as the cruel teeth cut through the stalks at her side; and, taking the direction of her "creep," rushed off towards the nearest gap and disappeared over the brow of the hill.

In the middle of the night she wandered back to the wheat-field. The scene before her eyes revealed a startling change. The corn stood in "stooks" on the stubble; no winding paths led here and there through a silent sanctuary, where countless waving, nodding plumes, bent and released by a gentle-flowing wind, had shimmered in the bright radiance of the harvest moon, when, coming home late at night from the marsh across the hill, she had stayed for a while on the mound by the gate, and tiptoe, with black-fringed ears moving restlessly, had listened to some ominous sound in the farmyard. The prickly stubble felt strange to her feet, so, carefully picking her way by the ditch, she crossed to the nearest gate and ambled down the lane. But the change noticed in the wheat-field seemed to have passed over the whole countryside. It was more and more pronounced during the following week, till, in October, the late harvest had all been cleared. The habits of the hare altered with the season. Having at last grown accustomed to the varied conditions of her life, she sometimes frequented the old tracks over the upland, but rarely resorted to the "forms" in which she had lain amid the summer wheat.

October brought her an experience which might have proved disastrous, but which, fortunately, resulted in nothing more than a passing fright. In the stalk of the rye occurs a knot, forming a slight bulge known to the peasantry as the "sweet joint." Rabbits and hares are extremely fond of this succulent morsel, and, in consequence, the rye-crop, if near a large warren, is in danger of being totally destroyed. Puss one night had wandered far to a field, where, some time before, she had discovered a patch of standing rye. The few remaining stalks were hard and uninviting, but there were some delicious parsnips among the root-crops. At dawn she settled down to hide between the rows of swedes close by, and remained secreted for the day; but towards evening a sportsman came in at the gate, and, with a low word of command and a wave of the arm, "threw off" his brace of red setters to range the field. Working systematically to right and left, the dogs sought eagerly for game. Soon the hare was scented, and while Juno, with stiffened "stern" and uplifted paw, stood almost over her, Random, "backing" his companion, set towards the furrow where Puss, perfectly rigid, and with ears well over her shoulders, crouched low, prepared for instant flight. Step by step the sportsman, with gun in readiness, moved towards Juno, cautioning her against excitement; while Random, sinking on his haunches, awaited patiently the issue of events. Suddenly, convinced that in flight lay her surest chance of escape, the hare leaped from her "seat," and with the utmost speed, though from the ease of her motions appearing to run slowly, made her way towards the hedgerow. There was a quick rush behind her as she started from the furrow, and then a loud, rasping exclamation from the sportsman, but nothing more; no shot was fired. She owed her life to several circumstances. The dogs were young, and in strict training; their master, knowing the natural fondness of "first season" setters for "chasing fur," had purposely refrained from killing the hare, and had turned his attention to the behaviour of his dogs. Then, again, he cherished a certain fondness for Puss, believing her to be the most persecuted, as well as the most innocent and interesting, of Nature's wildlings in the wind-swept upland fields.

Henceforward, but for one other incident, the life of the hare was singularly uneventful till the early spring. That incident occurred within a week of her escape from the setters, and once more her luck was due to the humanity of him who had found her among the turnips. The farm-lands frequented by the leveret were a favourite resort of many of her kind, and when moving about in the darkness of the night she often found signs of their presence near the gaps and gateways. The sportsman, knowing well that after harvest the poaching instincts of the peasantry and of the professional village "mouchers" would receive fresh stimulus, determined to forestall his enemies, and render futile some, at least, of their endeavours. So it came about that one night a keeper, assisted by several of the guests at the "big house" in the valley, and having previously made every preparation for the event, placed a net near each gate and before each likely gap within a radius of half a mile from the heart of the estate.

Unless hard pressed, a hare seldom leaves a field except by certain well-known openings in the hedgerow. Unlike the rabbit, she will not readily leap over any obstacle beneath which she can crawl; and whereas the "creep" of a rabbit through a gateway or a hedgerow is well-nigh invariably at right angles to the line of that gateway or hedgerow, the "creep" of a hare tends sideways and is sometimes slightly curved. To net hares successfully it is necessary to know their habits; and the keeper, having served a lifelong apprenticeship in field-craft, was prepared for every emergency. His object at this time was not to kill the hares, but simply to educate them, to warn them thoroughly once for all against the wiles of their worst enemy, the poacher.

As Puss was busily feeding in the dewy clover, she heard the quick, continuous gallop of a dog. This time, however, she had not to deal with Juno, the setter, but with a trained lurcher, borrowed for the occasion from a keeper who had captured the animal during a poaching affray. The leveret, peeping over the grass-tops, saw the dog coming rapidly on. He was over and past her in an instant. As he turned, she started off straight towards an opening where some sheep had partly broken down the hedge. The lurcher closed in, and drove her thither at tremendous speed. She strained every nerve, and, gaining the ditch, blundered blindly through the gap, and fell, helpless and inert, entangled completely within the treacherous folds of the unseen net. Her piteous cries, tremulous, wailing, heart-rending--similar to the cries of a suffering infant--were borne far and wide on the wind. The keeper soon reached the spot, and, placing his hand over her mouth to stop the cries, tenderly extricated the frightened creature from the treacherous meshes and allowed her to go free. For a few seconds, she lay in abject fright, panting and unable to move. Then, hearing the cries of another hare entangled in a bag-net some distance away, she bounded to her feet, and darted off--somewhere, anywhere, so long as she might leave the awful peril behind. Bewildered, but with every instinct assisting her in the desire for life, she ran along by the hedgerow, and, unexpectedly catching sight of a familiar gate, crouched and passed quickly through the "creep" beneath the lowest bar. But here, again, a net was spread; again the hare fell screaming and struggling into the meshes; and again the keeper released her. Exhausted by intense excitement and fear, she crawled into the "trash" in the ditch, and kept in hiding, not daring the risk of another capture. Luckily for Puss, the lurcher had already hunted the field in which she was now secreted, and so the timid creature remained undisturbed beneath the fern. When her wildly throbbing heart had been quieted by rest and solitude, she stole from her hiding place to nibble the clover at the side of the path. Towards dawn, she journeyed to a wide stretch of moorland on the opposite hills, and there made a new "form" on a rough bank that separated a reedy hollow from the undulating wilderness of heather and fern.

The leveret's adventures were destined to effect a considerable change in her habits. She was being roughly taught that to preserve her life she must be ever cautious and vigilant. Though danger threatened her by day and by night, she lived beyond the usual period of a hare's existence, partly because her early education was thorough and severe. Thus taught, she would pause for an instant at every gap and gateway before she passed through, and, if she found a net in her path, would turn aside, creep along by the hedge, and seek an exit at another place.

The perils to which she had been exposed created a feeling of intense restlessness, which harassed her throughout the winter months, and caused her to travel long distances, by the loneliest lanes and fields, to and from the moorland where now she had made her home. She remembered the scent of a human being since her experiences with the keeper, and, her powers of smell being wonderfully acute, was able to detect even the faintest signs which indicated that her dread enemy--man--had crossed her path. One night she smelt the touch of a hand on the grass-bents near her "form," and found also that the herbage had been moved aside. Though the scent was faint--the intruder having visited the spot soon after the leveret had set out in quest of food--the cautious creature forsook her lair, and spent the day in a sheltered retreat beside a heap of dry and withered leaves near the outskirts of a copse on the slope overlooking the moor.

Gradually she grew big and strong, becoming unusually fat as the autumn advanced, so that she would be able, if required, to withstand the rigour and the waste of a severe winter. Her coat was thick and beautifully soft, for protection against cold and damp. But while she increased in weight, she remained in hard condition because of her long journeys and frequent change of quarters.

It happened, however, that her first winter was helpful to the welfare of animal life in general. The heavy rains, it is true, greatly distressed the leveret. The nights were so dark, and the constant patter of the rain so interfered with even her highly trained powers of hearing, that, while the wet weather lasted, she seldom dared to leave the neighbourhood of her favourite resort, but crouched in the grass at the margin of the copse, and tried to obtain a meal as best she could from the sodden herbage.

Though on certain occasions Puss might have been discovered in hiding on the marsh, yet there, whenever possible, she chose a dry spot for her "seat." She loved, best of all, the undulating hills far above the river-mists, which, chilled at nightfall by an occasional frost, descended on the fields like crystal dust, and almost choked her if she chanced to pass within these wreathing drifts that brought discomfort and disease to man and beast alike.

But the want of exercise so affected her, that, when again the weather was fine and she ventured from her lair, she found herself unable to cover the usual distance of her nightly rambles. As the first cold glimmer of the dawn appeared in the south-eastern sky, she started back, in alarm at her fatigue, to complete the remaining mile of her journey home. Her weakness soon became apparent. Then, finding herself powerless to proceed, she turned reluctantly aside, and crouched, with Nature's mimicry for her protection, on the brown ploughland where the winter wheat was thrusting up its first green sprouts above the soil. But after a few days she was well and strong again. She suffered far less from the short, sharp frost that bound the countryside with its icy fetters, than from the rains. The frost scarcely interfered with her movements; indeed, it made exercise more than ever necessary. Forced to seek diligently for her food, she found it in a deserted stubble; there, when the sheep lay sleeping in the bright winter moonlight, she would squat beside them, nibbling the turnips scattered over the field as provender for the flock.

II.

MARCH MADNESS.

March came in "like a lion." The wind whistled round the farmstead on the hill, and through the doorway of the great kitchen, and down the open chimney. It woke up the old, grey-haired farmer who dozed on the "skew" in the ingle-nook by the crackling wood-fire; it almost made him feel young again with the vigour of the boisterous spring. It sang in the key-hole of the door between the passage and the best parlour; the mat at the threshold flapped with a sound as of pattering feet; and the gaudy calendars on the wall flew up like banners streaming in the breeze. The old man turned, and eagerly watched the hailstones, as they dropped tinkling on the roofs of the outhouses, or, driven aslant by the wind, crashed hissing against the ground, and, rebounding, rolled across the pebbled yard. The labourers came home to the mid-day meal, and, pausing at the door, shook the hail from their garments.

"Lads," said the farmer, "I've been spared to hear the whisper of another spring."

"God be thanked!" said the hind, "for seasonable weather at last. Every man to his trencher! the broth is in the bowls."

Out on the marsh the reeds beat in the wind. Every grass-fibre twisted and swung; the matted tussocks, drooping over stagnant pools near which the snipe, with ruffled feathers, probed the soil in search of food, were shaken and disentangled, so that the bleached blades of last year's growth fell apart, and exposed the fresh young sprouts rising from the bed of winter's death. Over the wide waste the March wind drove furiously, with blessing in the guise of chastisement, while, far above, the grey-blue clouds whirled fast across a steely sky, till the ashen moon gazed coldly on the waning day, as one by one the stars flashed overhead, the clouds rolled down into the pink and silver west, and the song of the wind became only a murmur in the leafless willows by the brook.

With the advent of March, a great change passed over the wild life of the uplands. The jack-hares threw aside their timidity, and wandered, reckless of danger, over the marsh, across the stubbles, and through the woods. Even in broad daylight, they frisked and quarrelled, in courtship and rivalry.

The leveret was now full-grown, and Nature's mothering instincts were strong within her. One evening, as she louped along her accustomed trail towards the turnip-field, she discovered a suitor following in her wake. Half in misgiving, half in wantonness, she turned aside and hid in the ditch. Presently she felt a soft touch on her neck: the jack-hare was pushing his way through the undergrowth. For a moment she stopped to admire him as the moonlight gleamed on a white star in the centre of his forehead. Then away she jumped, dodging round the bushes and hither and thither among the grassy tangles, while her admirer followed, frisking and leaping in sportive gaiety. Another jack-hare now came along the hedgerow. In utter mischief, Puss called "leek, leek, leek," as if pretending to be in distress and in need of help. "Leek, leek," came the low response, as, quickening his pace, the second hare sprang into the fern. But his audacity was not to go unchallenged. The first suitor immediately showed himself, and, making a great pretence of reckless bravery, prepared to give the second a warm reception. The doe-leveret, apparently indifferent, but nevertheless keenly interested in the combat, crouched on a little knoll by the path, while the jack-hares, sitting on their haunches, boxed and scratched, and rolled over each other in a singularly harmless conflict, neither suffering more than the loss of a few tufts of fur. The comedy might, however, have had a tragic ending. Presently one of the combatants--the hare that had come late on the scene--became slightly exhausted, and, ignominiously yielding to his rival's superior dexterity, ran back towards the distant hedge. Almost at once a fox crept out from the furze at the corner of the field, and trotted away on the scent of the fleeing hare, while Puss and her mate made off in the direction of a more secluded pasture.

A month passed--a month of general hilarity and indiscriminate fighting among all the hares in the district--and then, within a neat, dry "form," that Puss, with a mother's solicitude, had made in a carefully selected spot on a mound where the grass was tall and thick, her little leveret was "kittled." The doe-hare tended her offspring as carefully as she herself had been tended a year before. Her faithless lover had gone his own way. But Puss cared little for his desertion: she wished to live alone, under no monopoly as far as her affections were concerned, though for the time her leveret wholly engaged her mothering love.