CHAPTER I

HOW FLUFF-BUTTON CRIED QUITS

A lane winds steeply through Knockdane Wood; and at the top of the hill where the trees grow sparsely, there is a gate leading to a furze-grown field. The grass is cropped short and thick by generations of sheep and rabbits; and the slopes are dotted with gorse bushes which they have nibbled into all kinds of fantastic shapes. Between the wood and the field the gorse forms a prickly barrier six feet high, but it tapers off to mere pin-cushions of eighteen inches in the open. The first time that White-Lamb saw the bushes, he stubbed his nose into them, and then cried out because the thorns pricked. White-Lamb had only lived two days of his allotted span, and had not yet learned that gorse is prickly.

There were a score of sheep in the field, and each of them had her white lamb (or maybe two) running beside her; but only one White-Lamb comes into this story, because he was the only one who had anything to do with the course of events in Knockdane Wood, and even his influence was only indirect through Fluff-Button the Rabbit. Fluff-Button was a great hero in Knockdane, as any of the Fur Folk can tell you; but he would never have grown up at all if it had not been for White-Lamb, as this story will relate.

In the year of which I write, March and April changed places; for although the human calendars said that it was March, and in the woods the catkins had not shrivelled on the hazels, yet all day the westerly wind drove rain-storms over Knockdane. The lambs huddled close to their mothers with nothing but their restless tails appearing, when--hey presto--no sooner had they tucked themselves away comfortably, than the squall passed, and the sun blazed out upon the wet skirts of the rain. Raindrops dripped merrily from the hazel-catkins as the wind or a leaping squirrel shook them, and the air was full of the scent of wet earth and breaking buds.

Towards evening the showers became less frequent, and the sun shot long slanting rays over Knockdane. The old sheep coughed as they snatched at the wet grass, and the field resounded with the incessant bleating of the lambs who ran to a strange ewe and were butted aside.

Because White-Lamb still kept his close lamb's coat, and had not yet lost the instincts of his race in the placid vegetable life of his mother, he grew restless towards nightfall, and trotted over to the gate to look at the woods--an unknown land to him. The Night Longing calls to the animals who live under man's dominion as surely as to the Wild Folk, but they very seldom hear it. Sometimes, however, the sleepy cattle in the meadows lose their wits in the dark; and if a man passes by they forget that he is their lord and master, who in the daytime goads them where he will, and only remember that at one time their forefathers charged his naked ancestors through the forest, and gored and trampled upon them. The old impulses are strongest in the young animals, just as among men a boy burns with a hundred noble purposes which he will forget when he becomes a man, and soils his hands in the world's ways.

The path wound away until it was lost to view among the fir trees; but right at the end of the vista, and barred across perpendicularly by the tall stems, was a clearing into which the sunset light slanted. As White-Lamb watched the light on the path, and listened to the wind among the branches, he saw a shadow move among the withered fern stumps, and steal quickly towards him. White-Lamb watched it approach with his pink-tinted ears spread wide, and his innocent face pressed against the lower bar of the gate. At first he thought that the strange beast was a sheep, but a furtive gleam of sunshine touched its back and pointed ears and turned them ruddy. It came on with an easy silent gait, glancing from side to side, and did not perceive White-Lamb until it was quite close to him. Then it stopped, and eyed him narrowly with a pair of keen yellow eyes. White-Lamb felt a vague misgiving, and ran back a few steps towards the flock. The other slunk forward and slipped through a little hole at the side of the gate-post, whence his sharp nose peeped out. A dozen rabbits were playing a little distance down the fence, close to the sheep, and his attention was fixed upon these. Suddenly White-Lamb realised that all was not to his liking, and he uttered a loud and plaintive bleat. Instantly his mother raised her head, saw the intruder, and cried to her companions. The whole flock rushed together, each ewe with her lamb galloping beside her; and forming into a close circle they faced the enemy and stamped an insistent warning: 'Fox! fox!' The rabbits took the alarm at once, without pausing to discover the reason for the stampede. A dozen scuts whisked in the air, and then vanished into the hedgerow. There was, however, one small rabbit who had evidently but just left the nesting burrow, for he showed no fear. He hopped a few feet nearer the hedge, and then raised himself upon his fluffy pad of a tail to peer over the grass.

The fox saw his ears twitch, and glided forward a few feet before making a spring. But the old ewes took the alarm again, and stampeded. As White-Lamb scampered by his mother, his flying hoof struck the little rabbit, and brushed him aside. The flock then wheeled again upon the fox, just in time to see the rabbit's scut uppermost as he rolled head over heels into the runway, and hear the click of the fox's jaws which closed on the empty air at the end of his spring. He stood sulkily watching the sheep for a minute or two; but though he did not fear them individually, yet collectively the old ewes looked dangerously ready to trample upon an enemy in defence of their lambs, and he thought better of it. He turned away and cantered off towards the moor.

That was the first time that White-Lamb saw Fluff-Button the Rabbit, and but for his happy instinct to baa for his mother, it would have been the last. However, as it was, they often saw one another again, for Old Doe Rabbit had tunnelled her nesting burrow under a fir tree inside the wood, and used to lead her family out to feed in the evening. At first there were six of them, but as March turned into April, and White-Lamb's body grew to proportions more in keeping with his legs, foxes, cats and stoats took their toll, and their numbers diminished to three. After a time they achieved a certain independence. They crept out alone, and sat among the bluebells and combed their ears and pretended to be grown-up rabbits, until a pigeon clattering out of the fir trees or a magpie croaking in glee over a throstle's nest, made them tumble inside to their mother in a hurry. A mere human hunter would have said that there was absolutely no difference between Fluff-Button and his sisters, but he would have been wrong. Fluff-Button was no more like them than all the children in a human family are like one another, but only another rabbit could have seen the difference. They all had the same white dab of a tail, and the same ever-twitching whiskers, and they all had to go through the same training. All knowledge in the woods is divided into two kinds: those things which you are born knowing, and those things which you find out for yourself. Fluff-Button was born knowing that grass was good to eat, but he had to find out for himself that the bluebell leaves, which look much like grass, are full of unwholesome slimy juice and not nice to nibble. He also had to find out by experience that while foxes are dangerous and should be avoided, sheep are quite harmless. When he had learned this, he used often to find his way to the Sheep Field all alone, and feed among the lambs.

Once a day Paddy Magragh used to climb the hill to count the sheep. At his heels slunk a yellow terrier with a keen nose and a silent tongue, who could do anything from rounding up a sheep for his master, to killing a fox single-handed in Knockdane. But for this early morning visit, life in the Sheep Field was very peaceful. Nothing came between the furze bushes and the spring sunshine except when a rook flew overhead, croaking a quaint spring song to himself, or when a filmy cloud raced across the sky. The gorse flowers gave out a heavy perfume like warm apricot jam, and the fine spell brought out a horde of insects to hum round them. The lambs played together among the ant-hills, and the little rabbits played also. The games they played were the oldest games in the world--tig, catch as catch can, and king o' the castle. But though White-Lamb often saw Fluff-Button, and used to run and sniff at his little brown ears in the grass, I cannot say positively whether they ever talked to one another or no. I often lay in the bushes and watched them feed side by side; but the language of the Woods is not that of men. It is a more subtle, and yet a more simple language, communicated by movements of the eyes, ears, and whiskers, and no man has ever thoroughly learned it yet.

The night after the first bluebell had opened, Fluff-Button went all alone to the Sheep Field at moonrise for the first time. He was now three-parts grown, and instead of feeding by the hedgerow with one eye on covert, he crept further and further out towards the middle of the pasture like any old buck rabbit.

It was a chilly night; but the air on the hill was less cold than that in the valley, where a damp mist lay. A sheep-dog yelped monotonously at the end of his chain from a farmhouse beyond the wood; and at the bottom of the field short grunts and incessant bleating told that the sheep were feeding. The Sheep Field was always noisy at night. One or another of the ewes would lose sight of her lamb behind a bush, and then for a long while either cried to the other, and yet neither would stir; and the wind everlastingly sang in the trees in Knockdane.

By and by a pale April moon rose, and Fluff-Button sat up for the tenth time to flick the dew from his whiskers. The bushes around him took curious shapes in the half-light; and wander where he would among them, he saw no other rabbit. But suddenly his long ears sprang from the horizontal to the vertical, and his forelegs stiffened. The turf of the Sheep Field was firm and close, and carried the sound of galloping hoofs like a telephone. The sheep were on the move. Fluff-Button, used to their senseless panics, would have paid little heed had not the night air brought another faint taint to his nostrils. As it was, he hopped away slowly between two furze thickets. Almost before he could tumble aside the sheep were upon him, ewe and lamb jostling one another, while White-Lamb, who headed the stampede, leaped the bushes like a chamois. They rushed into a dense phalanx, and all stamped their fear and anger at something which was approaching them between the gorse bushes. Fluff-Button skipped round, and it was well that he did so, for there, not five yards away, stood Magragh's yellow cur dog with his tongue lolling out, and his wicked eyes on the sheep. The Night Longing had moved him and strange impulses stirred within him. He had forgotten all about his quiet domestic life, and his love for his master, and only listened to the voice which whispered that it would be good to chase the silly, woolly things in front of him--and leap upon them--and worry them. But for the moment he stood hesitating, for all his life it had been his duty to care for the sheep.

It was well for the sheep that they stood firm. Had they broken and run, the scales, which were now evenly weighted, would have turned. The dog would have dragged them down from the sheer lust of killing; and after that night he would have developed into what every farmer hates and fears--a sheep-killing dog. But a weight dropped into the other scale, and that weight was Fluff-Button. He lay right in the path, and his presence decided the matter. Cur Dog forgot those strange impulses which bade him kill the sheep, and only remembered that here was a rabbit which was lawful prey.

Fluff-Button doubled away nimbly from his rush, but even so the dog's jaws snapped together just behind his scut. Away they went down the field, the rabbit leading by a few bare yards. He had no time to double back into the gorse, and here there was no covert but a few bushes, therefore he headed for the wood.

Cur Dog had won many a Sunday's coursing, and had something of the greyhound strain mingled with his terrier blood. He did not give tongue, but ran silently with his nose to the ground. With his pursuer so close behind, Fluff-Button dared not try any of those elaborate dodges and twists which every rabbit knows, but he tore down the field like an arrow. The slope was in Cur Dog's favour, for a rabbit never runs his best downhill. He decreased his distance by a foot or two, but he came no nearer, for Fluff-Button strained every sinew, and buttoned down his ears and whiskers, that nothing might hinder him in the race.

Thus they reached the fence, and Fluff-Button cunningly slipped between two saplings, hoping that his enemy would dash into them in the dark, but Cur Dog was fortunate, and came through unscratched. Then began a long series of turns and twists among fern stumps and trees. Several times Fluff-Button thought that he had shaken off his pursuer, but every time a yelp from behind told him that the latter was still hot on the line. In a long chase the odds are against the rabbit. He is not accustomed to sustained efforts, and although only a swift dog can catch him in a dash to the burrow's mouth, yet if hunted far he soon tires. Fluff-Button longed for a bramble brake, but there was none near. His heart thumped against his ribs until he felt as though it must burst, for just then Cur Dog gave tongue loudly and long, with the confidence of a hunter who knows that his quarry is weary.

Fluff-Button turned down a ride. The moon had risen, and here where the trees grew sparsely it was comparatively light. Nevertheless the woods on either side were in deepest shadow, and Fluff-Button had eyes for nothing but the dog behind him. Hence he never saw a dark figure standing in the shadows, and he passed so swiftly that he scented nothing unusual. Neither did Cur Dog see or smell it as he tore down the ride, yelping on the trail with his nose to the ground.

Suddenly there was a flash--and a loud report split the silence of the woods. Cur Dog bounded his own height into the air, his howl died into a sob--he rolled over twice and then lay still.

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

Fluff-Button heard the report as he scudded through the bushes, but he never noticed that the galloping feet behind him had ceased. Some fifty yards further on was an old rabbit burrow. He dived into it, and lay panting in its bottommost recess until long after moonset. But no Cur Dog came to nose at the burrow's mouth.

Thus Fluff-Button might have cried quits with White-Lamb for the time that the latter summoned the flock to face the fox. But though the next evening found them together in the Sheep Field, yet they fed placidly side by side and exchanged no word nor sign; for it is not the way of the Wild Folk to show gratitude to one another.