She thought that her enemy, satisfied that the hill was bare of prey, would not trouble her again, so that it came as a surprise when, a few mornings later, she espied a vixen at the foot of the slope, endeavouring to solve the puzzle of the scent the hare had left on her way to the form less than an hour before. It was strange how little the sight perturbed her, but when unaffected by her extreme anxiety for the leverets she knew from experience there was no real need for fear. Never once had she known a fox to succeed in tracing her from foiled ground, though in the past she had known many who had tried as the vixen was now trying. There near the wall the creature persisted in the almost hopeless task, following now this way, now that along the many lines of scent to discover the final course taken by the hare after her last leap. Over and over again she seemed on the point of giving it up: the network of trails maddened and bewildered her; and her irritation made her snap viciously at the long bramble spray in which her brush got entangled. Presently, in her despair, she made a cast at random; as luck would have it, she hit the true line. At once she was all alive; her brush, which had hung lifeless, now wagged furiously, and at the sight of her enemy’s success the hare grew uneasy. Slowly, very slowly, the vixen advanced along the trail as if fearful of losing what had cost her so much trouble to find. Anon she came to the place above the clump of blossoming furze where since the midday visit the hare had woven another maze of tracks before coming to the leaping-place by the form. On reaching it the vixen tried to follow the trail as it had been laid, but the criss-crossing it had received so confused her that presently she lost patience and made a short cast beyond. Here she happened on a part of the trail where the hare had returned on her foil, and on coming to the spot near the ruin where it ended she actually raised her mask as if she believed the hare had taken wing and might be seen in mid-air. For a moment she seemed to despair again; but the hunger caused by the night’s bad hunting and the thought of her five ravenous cubs goaded her on; she shook the dew from her coat and made another cast. This took her within a dozen yards of the spot where mother and young squatted flat on the ground. It seemed that the vixen must scent them; had there been a breath of wind she could hardly have failed; but the air was still; not a spray or blade moved save those disturbed by the vixen as she moved hither and thither with ears widespread to catch the slightest sound. A stifled cry, the faintest rustle in that silence must have betrayed them; through the trying, critical seconds, however, they never moved, they scarcely breathed.
The vixen seemed loath to leave the spot; but at length she quitted it for the summit, where she searched the fallen stones and scaled the crumbled walls, her form clearly outlined against the sky now tinted with orange by the coming day. On the stone lintel she presently came to a stand, arrested by the sight of the sun which peeped above the eastern hills and warned her that it was time to be seeking her earth. Reluctant as she was to obey, she dropped to the ground and made her way slowly down the shadowed slope. Half-way in the descent she suddenly turned her mask and scrutinised the ground in the hope of catching the hare with head raised watching her retreat; but bush, rock, and frond alone met her roving eyes. Near the Giant’s Bowl she again looked back, and by the expression on her face, now vindictive rather than perplexed, seemed to say: “Wily one, you’ve beaten me this dawn, but I’ll lick my chops over you yet, both you and your tender young ones.” Then, the rumble of wheels urging her, she hurried away, her beautiful coat all aripple with the play of her lissom limbs. As soon as she had crossed the wall, the hare, who had observed her from behind the blades, resumed the suckling of her frightened young, fondling them as she had never done before.
It had been a narrow escape, and the hare was now all impatience to forsake the hill. But that could not be before nightfall, so she and the leverets spent the long day unnerved by the rank scent left by the fox on the herbage. The slow sun at last sank beneath the sea. At once the hare took the doe leveret in her mouth and carried it along the southern flank of the chain for more than a mile to the foot of Bartinney, where she laid it in a patch of bracken bordering a little green. The next moment she was on her way back at her best pace, as though she dreaded that the vixen might forestall her. But no enemy was to be seen: the jack was as she had left him. Seizing him by the skin of the neck she bore him rapidly along despite his kicking, crouching whilst two stoats passed, dropping him thrice to rest herself, and finally depositing him in a clump of rushes by a rill some score yards from his sister. It was not without a reason that she laid them on opposite sides of the green, for by thus separating them she hoped that at least one might escape detection in the event of a visit from an enemy.
On collecting himself after his strange experience, the jack sat and listened to the music of the water, whilst through an opening in the rushes his eyes scanned the green, whose close velvety sward seemed to cry aloud to be gambolled on. There, so the country people aver, the fairies forgather to hold high revel on the inviting turf, tripping to the tinkling of the falls, in the dark-green ring lighted by innumerable glow-worms. No little folk appeared that night, however; nothing in fact came near until the hare returned to attend to her young, before vanishing like the wraith she seemed and ensconcing herself in some brambles on the lip of the green.
She had not been there long when a magpie left his resting-place in the hawthorn overhanging the turf and stood preening his feathers on the topmost spray. Presently, his quick eyes noted the marks left by the hare’s pads on the dewy surface, and examined them searchingly as if to learn the identity of the trespasser. He imagined that a badger or a fox had made them; the thought that a hare—he had only seen one—had crossed the green never entered his head, much less that a family of hares was at that moment lying hidden around it. The inquisitive bird was soon joined by his mate, and after a little chatter he flew away with her towards a homestead from which the smoke was just beginning to rise. They alighted on the elder-tree springing from the wall of the rickyard, the white of their plumage very conspicuous in the bright level rays which lit them up and fired the dormer-window of the thatched roof beyond. By and by they dropped into the yard, where amongst the straw they found an egg. They broke and ate it. Then the hen-bird came flying back in great haste to the nest, as if she feared her precious clutch might be chilled and become addled. Later the cock-bird returned to tell her what was happening in the farmyard, and at once flew back to the elder. He was back again in half an hour: indeed he kept flying to and fro until sundown. The hare rejoiced in the restlessness of this arch-mobber of vermin: it gave her a sense of security such as she had not felt since the birth of her young. For her the magpie was an untiring patrol, and further, one gifted with a tongue that would make the boldest fox shrink from the insults it was capable of raining on him. Her fears fled in the presence of this sentinel of the wild, so that for a few minutes during the afternoon she actually fell asleep. “If only there were some night-bird to watch over us,” she thought while she sat awaiting dusk. And as soon as darkness fell an owl began hooting. At once, as if she took it for a signal, she stole from the form to attend to her young.
Her visit was most welcome to the jack, who was very sorry when she withdrew. He listened to her retreating steps, and as they died away tried to combat the feeling of loneliness that beset him. In the weary watch that followed he sorely missed the companion of his waking hours. He felt forlorn without her soft, warm side to nestle against; but in a night or two he found something to occupy him. He took to grooming himself, and off and on spent hours brushing his ears and licking his coat, especially the snow-white fur on his belly, which had looked so ghostly as his mother bore him through the dusk. He made himself as clean as a pink, and when the feeling of isolation