The Story Of Fluff-Button The Rabbit

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Title:     The Story Of Fluff-Button The Rabbit
Author: M. D. Haviland [More Titles by Haviland]

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.

 

CHAPTER II

THE SPRING LONGING

In the valley at the foot of Knockdane Hill there is a great meadow. It is like an island surrounded by the sea, for the woods come close up to its hedge on all sides except on the east, where the river runs; and just as an island may have a lake in the middle, so in the centre of the Big Meadow there is a little copse. The trees in the copse are sycamore and red-stemmed pine, and in spring the ground is carpeted with celandines and anemones. In the copse there is a hollow where long ago men used to quarry out stones; but now it is never used, and the heaps of flints are draped with bramble and cinquefoil trails.

When the men ceased to dig out gravel and gave the copse back to the Fur Folk, an old rabbit made his burrow under the roots of a pine tree, and he or his descendants lived there ever after. At the time of which I write, however, the woods had been rigorously trapped during the winter, and one by one the inhabitants of the Copse Burrow had disappeared until there were only two doe rabbits left. One was Mutch, a veteran of four seasons, with long yellow teeth and a grey coat, well versed in the wiles of the woods; and the other was Cuni, who had only been born the previous July, and who had fur as brown as her big soft eye.

From a human point of view a celandine bed is the most beautiful thing. It covered the copse with a broad sheet, softly green and golden, and the first things the rabbits saw when creeping from subterranean darkness were the golden flowers. Nevertheless, from the rabbit's point of view celandines are not so desirable. They are just the wrong height, and tickle the bunnies' noses as they hop through them; and besides, the broad leaves catch and retain raindrops, which is a grievous disadvantage when soaked and muddy paws have to be licked dry. At least that is what Cuni found. She came out when the flowers were all asleep after the rain, and the dawn was breaking over the mountains. The wind was keen and fresh, and bore the strong sweet scent of wet earth with it. The pine trees swayed and sighed--not with the boisterous roar with which they struggled with the autumn gales, but triumphantly, as though the sap were mounting to their topmost twigs. The light in the east grew primrose-coloured behind the wind-torn clouds, and beyond the river the rooks in the Ballylinch elms awoke and clamoured for the sun.

As the gale swept along, the woods were filled with a spirit which, although it is as old as the world itself, is yet born anew every year--the mad spirit of Spring.

Even old Mutch felt that the season was changing. As for Cuni, she leaped three feet into the air, and tried to play at hide and seek with herself round an ash tree; but Mutch, who was old and surly, chased her into a bramble bush. It is a curious thing that, just as in human society some old spinsters ape masculine dress and ways, and prate much about the Rights of Women, because, poor dears, they do not know what those rights really are; so in the woods old doe rabbits or old hen birds often gradually adopt the colours and language of the other sex. Therefore Mutch coughed in a deep voice and gobbled grass untidily like any old buck rabbit, but Cuni fed daintily and watched the stormy sunrise.

Presently she heard a rustle in the celandines, and sniffed cautiously to discover whether that which was coming were harmless rabbit, slinking stoat, or prowling cat. Suddenly there was a crisp, short thump which made the Copse ring: it was a signal. The old doe rose on her hind legs and listened; but Cuni peeped through the brambles to see from where the noise came.

Fluff-Button sat and kicked the ground loudly and persistently. He did not know why he did so any more than the celandines around his paws knew why they waved in the wind; but Fluff-Button knew when he did so and the flowers did not--there lay the difference. He was calling for his love, and as though fascinated Cuni's tremulous nose was thrust from covert, and she began to steal towards him. But as she was about to stamp an answer, she looked to the right and saw that old Mutch had hopped half-way across the clearing.

Fluff-Button turned round and saw two pairs of ears twitch. One pair was grey and lopped with age, but the second pair was adorable, and he made up his mind quickly. He hopped towards Cuni, utterly disregarding Mutch, and rose on his haunches to display his white vest and long whiskers. Cuni was visibly impressed by these, and by the beauty of his fine scut. When he tried to caress her she did not turn away, but suffered him to nuzzle at her furry shoulder, while she gave him delicate tickling kisses with her whiskers. After that Fluff-Button knew that his cause was won.

By now the sun was up, and the celandine calices expanded into perfect golden stars. The Spring Longing bade Fluff-Button leave the Copse and spend the day in the main wood, and Cuni went with him. They crossed the field, and entered a clearing where the low briars were draped with dry grass. The rabbits crept inside a tuft and hollowed it out into a neat round chamber. Fluff-Button obliterated the door with two deft touches, and then they settled down side by side. No hawk had eyes keen enough to detect them from above, and any foe on legs might have passed within a yard and never have seen them. But there are other ways of hunting than by sight.

* * * * *

Crash! It was noon. The rabbits, dozing contentedly in their form, awoke. Fluff-Button's ears moved the fraction of an inch, and then he squatted down with his eye glued to a peep-hole. Some heavy animal was forcing its way through the briars, but that did not frighten the rabbits so much as did a more distant sound: 'yow, yow, yowl.' 'Good dog!' said a voice just above their heads. Suddenly something rustled beside the form. The grass curtains were violently torn aside, and a huge grey rabbit head was thrust in. It was old Mutch. As she burst into the form her eyes glinted white as she glanced backwards. She thrust Cuni violently aside, and squatted down panting in her place, while Fluff-Button lay as still as death with his ears flattened and his paws bunched together. Cuni, terrified, forgot that primary rule of 'lie still,' in keeping of which rabbit safety lies, and ran a few steps. The man, standing knee-deep in briars, saw the grass stir. 'Here! good dog!' he called; and motioned with his hand. There was a rush, a wild scuffle, and Cuni bolted down the hedge. It was well for her that the dog started in pursuit, otherwise the gun would have cracked before she had gone a dozen yards; but as it was the man dared not fire for fear of hitting his dog, and when he did so the shot merely buried itself harmlessly two feet in front of Cuni's nose.

Now began a long chase. The dog was young and headstrong, and the temptation to chase the rabbit was too much for him; but afterwards he wished that he had obeyed his master's whistle and left her alone. For first of all Cuni led him through laurels against which he stubbed his nose at every turn; and then she took him through some brambles where he tore his ears; and last of all she raced for the Lower Wood. Here she increased her lead a little, and then, looping back upon her trail, she ran under a fallen fir tree, and went to ground thirty yards further on. The dog went down the blind lead first, then had to turn back along the true one to the fir tree. It took three minutes for him to convince himself that his game was gone, and then he returned, panting, to an interview with his irate master, after which he was a sadder and wiser dog.

Cuni could not stay long underground when the Spring Longing was abroad in the wood, and two hours afterwards she crept out again. Her instinct led her back to the bramble patch, but, alas, the form was cold and empty. A jay squawked overhead and warned her not to linger. The jay is a most untrustworthy watchman and gives a false alarm twenty times a day; but the Wood Folk know that if by any chance an enemy should pass by, the jay will surely see it, therefore they always obey his warning. On this occasion the enemy turned out to be a stoat, and Cuni fled quaking lest it should be on her trail. Not until she was far away did she feel safe to continue her search. Once she ventured to signal timidly, but the only answer she received was from a doe rabbit, who, when she found that it was one of her own sex who had stamped, looked much as one girl in a ballroom might do if another invited her to stand up and dance.

At last Cuni came upon a trail. It was cold and stale, but unmistakably rabbity, and the Spring Longing bade her follow it. It led her through devious ways across the Big Meadow into the Celandine Copse, and thither Cuni followed it through an archway under a bramble. The wind had dropped and the Copse was silent but for the spring chirp of an oxeye. Under the trees the scent was stronger but strangely irregular, as though a second and feebler trail were mingled with the first. Cuni followed it into the gravel pit, expecting a signal, but none came. She slid down a heap of tinkling shale, and her nose led her to the old cart road on the other side, where the grass was tender and beloved by the rabbits.

Cuni could guess well enough what had happened here, for the trails were like a double string of beads--a narrow thread where the rabbits had hopped straight forward, and here and there an expansion where one or other had turned aside to graze.

Suddenly Cuni turned a corner and came full upon Fluff-Button, who was sitting with his back turned to her; while just in front of him stood--Mutch. Fluff-Button was feeding in a nervous, jerky manner, and when presently Mutch crept up to him and touched him pleadingly, he only hopped away petulantly.

Mutch, repulsed, sat up and looked round--to see Cuni. Whether the sight awoke in her the old mother instinct of the woods to drive away a young one able to fend for itself, or whether it was simply jealousy, I cannot say, for the Spring Longing works strange changes in the beasts; but, anyhow, she rushed straight at Cuni and ripped a tuft of fur from her flank. Cuni staggered, but Mutch was no longer young enough to wheel and pursue her advantage quickly, and before she could renew her attack, the little rabbit, spurred by the pain and fear of the old bully, whisked past Fluff-Button into the bushes. Mutch hopped back, full of pride at her achievement, and sought to caress Fluff-Button with her whiskers. But her jealousy had over-reached itself. Fluff-Button had wandered all the way from the Wood to the Copse seeking something which had gone from him; and although Mutch had followed him all the way with caresses he had rejected her, for she did not satisfy the longing which possessed him. However, when he saw Cuni's little white scut scurry by, his instinct told him that this was what he sought. He pushed past Mutch unceremoniously, and leaving her behind to stamp impotent signals, he scampered after Cuni.

He found her for the second time crouching among the celandines; and this time he did not delay, but claimed her at once. Neither did Cuni play any more love games, but just nestled against him happily.

Could there have been found a fairer Eden than that Copse, and could Adam and Eve in their innocence have been happier than were Fluff-Button and Cuni? Even the All-Father in Whom the woods live cannot make happiness more than perfect, and for a little while these two were perfectly happy, for the Spring desire was satisfied.

If there were a tragedy in the Woods that day, perhaps it was that of old Mutch, who came upon the pair too late, for it was the first time that she had failed to win a partner for the summer, and she was bitterly jealous. However, grief and joy, and even life itself, are very transitory among the Wild Folk, and before the early evening closed in Mutch was grazing peacefully in the Meadow.

And there, when the celandines shut, Fluff-Button and his belovèd followed her to see the moon rise; and the wind sang among the swelling buds of the warm summer days to be.

 

CHAPTER III

THE INVASION OF GARRY'S HILL

Fluff-Button and Cuni re-opened the big burrow at the top of Garry's Hill. Garry's Hill is a big grassy mound just outside Knockdane, with one stunted hawthorn growing on the top. Long ago many rabbits had lived here, but a mysterious epidemic had swept them all away, and the grass grew thickly over the entrance to the holes. Fluff-Button lay out in the woods all day and worked at the burrow at night. Cuni was never very far away from him at this time, and often made her form close to his; but she never allowed him to touch her or follow her about.

By and by she dug out another tunnel further down the field, and took particular pains that her mate should not find out its existence. For more than a month she lived apart, and he only saw her occasionally; but one fine day she returned to the burrow with six fluffy atoms hopping after her. At first Fluff-Button was disposed to resent their intrusion on his privacy, but Cuni discreetly kept her family away from his own particular dormitory, and led them out to feed at a respectful distance.

The six youngsters throve, for Garry's Hill was so exposed on all sides that if ever hawk, cat, fox or man came near, Mother Cuni's keen senses discovered him, and a smart 'thump' summoned her family below ground at once. Of course, as accidents will happen, not all the six grew up. A cunning old vixen from Knockdane came round one evening and hid on the brow of the hill. Cuni's eldest born grew impatient, and ventured out, in spite of his mother's warning 'thumps.' He was never seen again, and neither was his sister who fed far out in the field one evening and was marked down by a stoat.

When the survivors of the family were grown up, Cuni opened out an old gallery, and lined it with grass bents and fur from her soft body. She grew very morose and shy at this time, and would let none of her other offspring venture near. A few days later a second litter appeared, but Cuni did not lead them out to graze with the others until July was well begun. During the long summer evenings the rabbits lay and basked in the sun, stretching themselves on the hot sand to warm their white waistcoats, or fed and frolicked with one another. A rabbit is the most humorous and cheerful creature in the world--those whose lives are hardest and most precarious usually are--and delights in nothing so much as in playing off a mild joke on his fellows. Only Fluff-Button fed apart, and kept his own little plot of pasture to himself; for he permitted no liberties, and kept strict discipline among his sons and daughters.

Now that the rabbit family was so increased, they enlarged their quarters considerably. Sometimes they used the tunnels of a bygone generation, but more often dug them out for themselves. This is a plan of the burrow, and, as will be seen, it is very complicated and irregular. Whenever one of the rabbits felt inclined he dug a new passage, but as he generally left it unfinished, there were many blind alleys which led nowhere in particular. All the parts which are shaded in the plan were seldom-used 'hide-ups' and 'escapes,' but the rabbits knew their geography very well, and in times of danger generally had at least one 'bolt-hole' open.

That August was very wet and cold. There was never very much grass on Garry's Hill, and now what there was was wet and sodden, and the wind drove through the lonely hawthorn bush on the summit with a roaring rush. Clouds of mist drifted over Knockdane, and the pigeons were blown about the rainy skies. The hill burrow was well drained and dry, but on the flat lands the holes were filled with water, and the rabbits lay out in the damp woods.

Garry's Hill stood in a field, at the bottom of which was a blackthorn fence among whose roots dwelt a colony of brown rats. A stream flowed swiftly at the foot of the hedge, and one gusty afternoon when one of the rabbits crept out to nibble a little sodden grass, it was rising fast. The rabbit did not notice it, however, for the Fur Folk have no time to waste over what does not directly concern them, and even when she saw a big grey rat, dripping wet, run up the bank, she did not take the alarm.

All the early part of the night the rain came down steadily until the upper galleries of the warren were quite wet. The burrow was pitch dark, and the air hot and thick, when Cuni awoke. She was blocked in on all sides by warm furry bodies, nevertheless she detected an unusual noise at the burrow's mouth--a faint scratching, and then a squeak. Something was creeping in. Cuni kicked the ground warningly, and as the others awoke, she pushed into the main passage. Something small and wiry beneath her paws squealed and snapped. Cuni darted up the passage stamping wildly--it was a rat.

By this time the rest of the rabbits were awake and rushing about in a panic. Every now and then they collided in the darkness, and fled under the impression that they had run against an enemy. Rabbits are like sheep: let one lose his head and the rest will follow suit.

Suddenly there was a sonorous 'thump,' and Fluff-Button, king of the burrow, came out of his dormitory, to be nearly carried off his legs by a pair of rabbits who jostled past him. All at once, in the narrowest part of the tunnel, he came upon a party of rats. They were all draggled and wet, and crowded into the burrow for shelter, for the brook had risen and drowned them out of their homes. Fluff-Button backed into a hide-up, and the rats crowded after him. A rabbit cannot fight his best in cramped quarters, but a grown buck has plenty of courage when pushed into a corner, and his sharp claws are weapons not to be despised. One rat nipped Fluff-Button's shoulder, and in an instant the latter buried his teeth in the aggressor's quarters. The rat yelled, for they cut like chisels, and his companions came on eagerly. Like a schooner among a fleet of herring boats, Fluff-Button ploughed through the band, jostling them right and left, and sprang into the wider chamber further on where a herd of frightened doe rabbits crouched. Here he had more space, and when he heard the invaders coming, he kicked out with his strong hind claws. The foremost rat rolled back limply with blood upon his snout, and instantly the rest threw themselves upon him with shrill cries. Fluff-Button took advantage of the respite to fly. He scuttled through the tortuous windings of the burrow, and through a bolt-hole to the open air. It was still raining fitfully, but there was a pale streak in the east where the sun would presently rise. Rabbits popped in and out of all the holes, for they dared not rest below ground lest the rats should drive them into one of the many 'hide-ups' and then attack them. Fluff-Button scampered over the brow of the hill, and into a bolt-hole on the other side, where he lay panting.

There was a young rabbit of Cuni's first family, who, although the season was so late, had a litter in a remote chamber, just beyond where Fluff-Button lay. She dared not thump, lest the noise should betray her presence, but lay very still with four youngsters nuzzling at her side. By and by Fluff-Button heard something sniffing its way towards him, for the tunnel carried sound like a telephone. The anxious little mother also heard it, and sat up. Fluff-Button waited until he judged that the rat was within range, and then flung up a shower of sand with his hind feet. The rat squeaked and sat up to dust his whiskers. He imagined that he had come up a blind passage, and retraced his steps. Now there were two ways which he might have taken, but as luck would have it, he chose the wrong one, and blundered up the gallery towards Brownie's nursery. It was shaped like a bottle with a long winding neck, and in the narrowest part he met Brownie.

As a rule a doe rabbit is the gentlest of wild things; but motherhood will nerve the most timid, and Brownie's whiskers twitched as she faced the foe who was stealing towards her in the darkness. The rat cried out, and was answered by three or four of his comrades, who crowded after him. They were hungry, and very fierce, for they had already tasted blood and knew that a meal awaited them if they could win it.

In mortal terror Brownie struck out right and left with her teeth, and sundry squeaks told her that her snaps had taken effect. Two rats clung to her on either side, but hampered as she was, she kept the rest at bay, for while she struggled they could not press past her into the nest.

Just now the rabbits were in desperate straits. Two of the weaklier youngsters had been killed, and many more were badly bitten. Gradually the rats were driving them out as wolves drive sheep. All alone in the distant nesting burrow, Brownie faced her assailants and held her body as a living shield to protect her little ones; but she was failing fast. The airless darkness around her seemed full of noise, hot gasping breathing, and snapping teeth.

Suddenly a strong pungent odour drifted down the passage--an odour which every rabbit knows and fears; and Brownie made a last despairing struggle, for her nose told her as well as her eyes could have done that a stoat was loping towards the scene of the fight. The rats rallied their forces in alarm, and the rabbits stampeded anew, for both knew that their most deadly enemy was hunting through the warren.

But for once in a way the stoat brought salvation to the rabbits on Garry's Hill, for a rash rat snapped, and his teeth met in the newcomer's shoulder. Instantly four stiletto points pierced his brain--he tottered round in a circle, sobbed and died. The stoat, with his appetite whetted, passed on and drove into the press of rats. They clung round him like leeches, but the place was very narrow and they could not reach his flanks. In that face-to-face combat in the darkness the odds were with the stoat. A rat's courage is indomitable and his teeth are sharp; but between them and those of the stoat there is all the difference between a scythe and a bayonet. Both are good cutting instruments, but the latter is fashioned expressly for war and the former is not.

The stoat went into the fray joyously. He slew two and drove the others back. Then, for he never noticed Brownie trembling in her nursery, he glided off and made his way to the main dormitory, where he found another party of rats assembled. These fled before him into a 'hide-up,' whither he followed them, and although he sustained two or three wounds himself, he mortally wounded another. The tables were now turned with a vengeance. The rats were in a worse plight than their whilom victims; for wet, starving and bewildered, they were hunted through a strange warren by their most implacable enemy. The rabbits had one and all retreated to the remotest corners which they could find, but the stoat heeded them not, for he killed among the panic-stricken rats for the sheer lust of killing. Even if by chance he crossed a rabbit's trail and followed it up, he invariably stumbled across some terrified rat who sat and jibbered in the darkness.

At last he was satiated and retired to Fluff-Button's dormitory to sleep. Two rabbits were dead besides Brownie's litter, who had paid the grim penalty which is always paid by nestlings whose nursery is discovered. Of the rats, two had been wounded and slain by their fellows; the stoat had accounted for four; as many more had bolted from the burrow; and the survivors, some six in number, cowered in an old nursery as far as possible from their enemy.

The stoat slept until the day was well advanced towards noon, and neither rat nor rabbit dared to stir lest he should wake and slay once more. At last he rose and glided from the burrow, and then--and not until then--did they venture to leave their hiding-places.

So that was the end of the great invasion of Garry's Hill, but it was long before the rabbits settled down afterwards. As for the remnants of the rats, they retreated to the little-used end of the warren and established a system of tiny passages of their own, running among those of the rabbits. They lived on terms of armed neutrality with their unwilling hosts--never daring to attack a full-grown buck or doe, although not so scrupulous with regard to nestlings; and often on warm summer evenings, if you hide behind the brow of the hill and wait, you may see the rats and rabbits feeding and playing side by side.

 

CHAPTER IV

THE FEAR THAT WAS IN THE WAY

Brownie was one of the first family of Fluff-Button and Cuni. It has already been related how she fought the rats in the Garry's Hill burrow, and enough has been said to show that she was a very devoted mother, as indeed most rabbits are. But she had been so terrified by that experience that she resolved to make her next nest right away from the warren; so she dug a hole into the hillside at about a hundred yards' distance.

In the darkness her four babies were only known to her as a squeaking, naked mass, helpless and wholly beloved. She was ignorant of their very number, they had no individuality, nevertheless she lavished all her care upon them, and lay with them all day, feeding and licking them. Only at nightfall she crept out to feed herself, with both ears on the alert. But very few enemies crossed Garry's Hill at night. Now and then an owl hooted in Knockdane; the nightjars purred among the pine trees at the bottom of the hill; and from the warren came the distant bustle of the rabbit community--the munching of many teeth, the splashing of many feet in the dew, and the stamping of scores of signals.

The fern croziers had fully uncoiled, and the lowest bells on the wild hyacinth carillons were fading, before the babies acquired their fur jackets. Under ordinary circumstances they would have remained below ground a few days longer, but an unfortunate accident hurried them out into the world.

Theoretically June is the month of sunshine and flowers; actually--in Knockdane, at all events--there are flowers enough, but June is too often ushered in by pitiless soaking rain. All the new greenery of the woods is saturated, and the hemlocks and nettles, stimulated to ardent growth, begin to send up their shoots waist-high. This is what happened in the season of which I write, for it rained for two nights and a day, and all the flowers seemed drowned. There was trouble enough in the Garry's Hill burrows, but it was very serious indeed for Brownie. A nesting-hole is dug for temporary use only, and has not the drainage of a permanent burrow. The water soon began to filter in from the sides, and a very respectable trickle ran from the entrance. By the second morning the bedding was soaked, and the sucklings lay in a pool of water. For the present they were homeless, and Brownie saw that the only thing was to take them into the fields. Three brown tots, blinking painfully in the daylight, crawled on to the grass; but when the fourth appeared, Brownie sat up, and her nose worked as fast as the 'quaking grass' round, for the last little rabbit was as white as the hawthorns in the hedgerows. There were legends in Knockdane that, in the days when the beeches round the Great White House were saplings, there had been a race of white rabbits in the woods; but for many many years none had been seen there. Perhaps some long-gone ancestor had transmitted his singular colouring to Brownie's nestling, or else some trifling detail in Nature's machinery had been out of gear, for she had not a brown hair upon her, and out on the open slope was as conspicuous as a crow on a snowdrift. However, the Fur Folk live and work only in the present. They are guided by mysterious laws--the accumulated wisdom of past generations--written in the blood of those who went before and neglected to obey the code--and Brownie knew that her babies must lie out on the hillside, for to take them to the warren was to court disaster. She hid the first one in a tussock six feet away in one direction, and the second a few paces from him, while the third was left in some clover. The fourth--the white one--had to put up with a meagre root of rushes. When each little rabbit lay stone-still, the mother went away herself, for she knew that her presence would only add to their danger. When she looked back to judge of the success of her stratagem, the three brown babies were invisible in the grass, but the white one could be seen all over the field. Nevertheless, because of the rulings of the law of the Fur Folk, Brownie went her way, and left her litter to shift for themselves during the day.

The rain had ceased at sunrise, and, although grey vapours curled before the clearing lift, the hillside was a very pleasant place. There were rosy clover clubs, and the yellow bird's foot trefoil beloved of blue butterflies, daisies, and the dainty milkweed, all growing so close together that the grass was almost crowded out. The fluting of the blackbirds in Knockdane only seemed the more mellow for the rain, and skylarks mounted up in rapturous jubilee.

The sun had climbed quite high before the sparrow-hawk came swinging round the wood. He spied the tell-tale white ears a hundred yards away, and turned towards them. He slanted down at fifty miles an hour, glanced aside six feet from the rush-tuft, and switch-backed upwards again--rabbit verily, but doubtful--uncanny--white. Again he stooped and hovered. This stillness, this whiteness transcended his experience. It was too blatantly conspicuous--there was surely something in it not apparent to the eye. Perhaps it was a trap. As the hawk paused, his grim shadow fluttered above the youngster in the clover, and the latter lost his nerve. He ran a few inches and crouched again. The hawk saw a quarry which was normal and probably safe. Besides, he was hungry. He dropped on to the grass, and pitching lightly, struck. There was a little cry; and then flying low, overweighted with his burden, he skimmed across the field.

That was the first, but not the last time, that danger turned aside from the--white rabbit I was about to say, but let us rather give her the dignity of capitals, a dignity ever afterwards hers in Knockdane, and speak of her as the White Rabbit. For the rest of the day no living things but larks and bumble bees came near, although once or twice a bullock blundered by and set the rabbits' hearts thit-thudding. Towards evening the mother-rabbit came up the hill to the nesting burrow. The babies heard her coming well enough, but two--the White One and a brown--were too well drilled to budge. The third, however, ran to her unsummoned, and was instantly punished for his disobedience, for she kicked him head over heels, and then signalled to the others that their time of waiting was over. Whether she noticed that one was missing I cannot say. The Fur Folk have no time to grieve. She gathered the three remaining ones together, and fed them and licked them all over tenderly with soft whisker kisses.

They spent that night on the hill. When it rained the babies sheltered under their mother's soft coat and did not know how cold it was. Brownie could have told how sharp the night winds were, and how wet the ground, but the little bodies under her white vest were warm, and that was compensation enough for her.

The next day they again lay out on the hill; but alas! the sparrow-hawk has a good memory, and where he has killed one day, he will come the next. Thus it happened that on the second evening only two answered the mother's signal--the White Rabbit and a brown brother.

On the third day Brownie took them down the field. It was dangerous, for the hedge was full of enemies, but she dared not risk the hawk again. Even the peeps from the hill had not prepared the little ones for anything so immense as the world into which they came, blue sky overhead and grass--a perfect forest peopled with strange beasts--all around them. Brownie was ravenous, and the young ones, watching her tear off grass blades and eat them up, ventured for the first time on imitation. She kept her family in the ditch all day, she herself lying hidden close at hand with eyes and ears always alert for danger. Nevertheless, for all her care, the little brown rabbit strayed too far from her side, and being young and ignorant, he never heard the sniff-sniff of the stoat hunting down a runway, until it was too late. Then Brownie, who knew the meaning of that pitiful minor cry, very quickly and silently shepherded her one remaining young one over the fence into the next field; and the scent was cold before Keen resumed his hunting.

So only one of the litter remained, and for three days Brownie guarded her jealously. On the fourth morning very early they went out to feed. The dewfall had been very heavy, and soaked them from nose tip to tail, and the bats wheeled overhead. The coat of the little White Rabbit looked weird in the gloom as she sat up and tried to comb her whiskers as her mother did. Of the short hot nights of June--of their mystery, and their majesty, and the ways of their children, what do men know? Nothing, but they mar much. Only the white owl had seen Jack Skehan go his rounds at sunset, and he, who, happy bird, lived where pole traps were unknown, how could he know the significance of what was left on the hedge bank? So it came to pass that at sunrise, when the larks were singing on the hill, and the whitethroats babbling in the brambles, Brownie, slithering through the hedge with her suckling behind her, slipped her head into a snare cunningly set against a burrow mouth, and somersaulted into the ditch, drawing the noose tight round her neck. At the first alarm the little one bolted and hid tremulously in a clump of buttercups, not daring to move for several minutes. Then, as all was still and the robins began to sing again, she ventured to peep out. Her mother stood raised on her hind legs as she had often seen her before when about to climb such a bank; but now Brownie leaned there statue-still, her hind paws just dragging on the ground. The White Rabbit did not understand it at all. She bit off a few grass blades and tried to chew them up, but they seemed hard and stringy to her unaccustomed teeth, and she ventured to nuzzle at her mother's soft coat. It was quite warm, but Brownie took no notice of the caress; and when the little one pushed against her, she swung ever so gently to and fro.

The sun rose over the crest of Garry's Hill, and the dragon-flies--winged needles of red and blue--hawked backwards and forwards over the brambles. The White Rabbit did not stray very far from the place; she waited for her mother to go on, but Brownie gave no signal, nor did she stir. The little one grew uneasy, and raising herself on her fluffy tail licked her mother's flank to show that she was hungry, but even this never-failing appeal received no answer. Nevertheless soon afterwards, when Jack Skehan went the round of his snares, he found a doe rabbit hanging in the hedge bottom with her neck broken; and nestling at her side, tiptoeing up to reach, a little white rabbit was helping herself to a warm drink. Even in death Brownie fulfilled the first office of motherhood.

How the White Rabbit knew that man was dangerous I cannot say. Hitherto she had innocently trusted every bird and beast; but bolt she did, and only just in time, as a dirty brown hand snatched at her. She ran up the hedge as fast as her stumpy legs could carry her, stubbing her nose against hemlock stalks, and tripping over bramble trailers. It seemed to her that she had run many miles, but as a matter of fact it was only ten yards before she flopped down, utterly breathless, with her flanks heaving. For the first time she was afraid--terribly afraid. Every leaf concealed an enemy, every rustle seemed a footstep. Fear was abroad on the hedgeside. The shadow of the man's presence lingered even when his footsteps had passed into the distance. A broody blackbird 'chinked' anxiously, and a pigeon wheeled aside with a 'swoof.' A few inches from where the little rabbit lay gaped a bolt-hole of the hedge burrow, and her instinct bade her creep within into the cool, comfortable darkness.

This is how the White Rabbit entered upon her life in the woods, orphaned, with nothing to guide her but the ancestral code which every rabbit knows. However, she had already learned three things, and important ones too--that hawks are dangerous, stoats still more so, and men are to be dreaded most of all.

* * * * *

Were I to relate all the vicissitudes which befell the White Rabbit during the following days, I should be accused of recounting miracles; for perhaps under the circumstances not one rabbit in ten would have survived. The ditch was full of enemies, for hedges are the Fur Folk's highways from field to field, and foxes, cats, and stoats patrolled it from hour to hour. The next evening the White Rabbit worked along to the demesne wall, under which a little drain ran, and crept into the wood. If there was vastness and mystery in the fields, how much more under the trees? The sanicle spread a silvery pall above the dying bluebells; the thick scent of the hawthorn was borne to and fro on the night wind; and the woodcock, playing in the dusk, 'chissicked' as they wheeled overhead. That night, for the first time, the White Rabbit ate grass and relished it. She was very hungry, and once her little teeth learned the knack of nibbling criss-cross up a blade, she found that it was pleasanter than her previous attempts had led her to believe. In fact, she was so intent upon her newly learned accomplishment that she never heard the owl swoop down with a thrum of soft wings, and then slant up just as the hawk had done on the hill. But she heard the click as he alighted on a branch overhead, and seeing his eyes, catlike and luminous in the gloom, she hid under a bush.

A day or two later, the White Rabbit had one of the narrowest escapes of her life. Perhaps she had got over her first fright and grown reckless; at any rate, she came out into the grass in broad daylight. The field was purple with ripening grasses, and the warm wind bore the scent of young birch leaves--the sweetest of all summer scents. It was good to be alive. The White Rabbit lay down on her side, and stretched herself luxuriously in the hot sun. Bees hummed comfortably in the vetches, and the grasshoppers assiduously polished their shanks. Suddenly, in the sunshine-chequered hedge, she caught sight of a curious creature moving gently to and fro. She had never seen anything quite like it before. Its deliberate, rhythmical movements fascinated her, and she watched it dance behind a dock plant and out again, with an intentness which rejoiced the heart of a certain wary hunter who crouched behind the said dock. The White Rabbit hopped a step or two nearer, and stood up in order to see this wonderful thing better. At that moment the cat ceased to lash its tail and sprang. The rabbit caught a glimpse of unsheathed claws, bared gums, and dilated eyes, and dived into a forest of cockfoot grass. The cat, at fault, made short excited rushes hither and thither as he heard the rustle of the fugitive's steps, but the White Rabbit flung herself into a stunted blackthorn bush and lay gasping. By and by, when she had recovered sufficiently from her fright to sit up and polish the 'cuckoo froth' from her whiskers, she peeped out; and lo and behold in a runway, with his paws tucked away cosily before him, the cat sat and waited.... The White Rabbit very silently withdrew, and escaped by the further side of the bush. That was the fourth lesson she learned: Beware of the cat--the patient hunter.

It was not until she was three parts grown that the White Doe realised that she was not in all respects like other rabbits. By then she had learned many things. She knew that the badger and the hedgehog and the squirrel and the shrew are quite harmless, but that the fox and the stoat and the cat must be avoided. She knew that the meadow-grass tastes better than either the cockfoot or the couch; and that the surest way to come to grief is to bolt into a hole without first finding out whether it has a back door or no. By degrees, however, she began to find out something more important still, namely, that the rest of the Fur Folk turned aside from her path. Did she hop into the clearing where the other rabbits came of nights to feed, or visited the Dark Pool among the sallies, then the circle was immediately broken up, and vanishing feet fired a whole volley of signals from the bushes. If she fed in the daytime, the squirrels overhead chattered and speculated until the jays took up the matter, and half the woodside was in a fluster. This knowledge did not come in a day. The pignut flowers died, and the enchanter's nightshade had sent up its faint spires in dark places before the White Rabbit realised her powers. It was the fox who opened her eyes to the fact that a certain magic was hers in her perilous ways. One evening after sunset she squatted upon a 'rabbit's table.' There is a rabbit 'table' in almost every glade. It is generally a moss-grown tree stump, or more seldom an ant-hill, upon which the rabbits love to sit for the sake of the expansive view (comparatively speaking) which the extra twelve inches affords them. It is also very often a trysting-place. The White Rabbit was washing herself. It was the penalty which she paid for her uniqueness, that she was obliged to spend no mean portion of the day combing her pink ears and cleansing her silky stockings. Hence she neither heard nor winded the fox's approach until he snapped a twig in the clearing itself. Then, looking up, she saw in the shadows what appeared to be a pair of red stars. The blood of the White Rabbit seemed turned to water; she was paralysed with fear; even her nose ceased its eternal tremolo. She could only stare back, bemused with terror. It must be said that the fox had not entered the glade with any fixed idea of hunting there, he was merely passing through it; hence the increased awfulness of the apparition of the ghost-rabbit on the moss cushion. It was nearly dark, but a shaft of light came down aslant between two tree-tops. In the gloom she appeared larger than her natural size--misty, luminous. The hair along the fox's spine bristled, a growl rose in his throat. It was so quiet, so light; as if fascinated he began to tiptoe forward. Remember that there is hardly anything white known in the woods, except here and there a flower. There is neither white bird nor beast; even the white eggs of the pigeon are laid where none of the Fur Folk can see them, except it be Koutchee the squirrel. Men--wiseacres--who would judge Nature by their printed books, talk grandly of the benefit of Protective Resemblance, and the Survival of the Fittest. They have left out of count the germ planted in the being of the higher Fur Folk--a germ which is often carried from birth to death undreamed of, undeveloped--but which in man, another step up the ladder, becomes a power which is accountable for untold cruelty and strife--superstition. Had all rabbits been white since the first of the race, then indeed the fox's hunting would be easy enough; but when once in ten generations a white rabbit appears, its chances of life are many times greater than those of its fellows, for in the eyes of the hunters it is compassed round with magic, a thing set apart.

The fox crept to within eight feet of the mystery and cowered down, for there was little or no scent to enlighten him as to its nature. The White Rabbit's red eyes were wide with horror, but under the nightmare spell of the fox's proximity she could not move. Fear clogged her limbs, and she watched him, fascinated. She was, of course, entirely unaware that it was she herself who thus checked him. She believed herself almost invisible, and feared to move lest she should betray her presence, thus obeying the arbitrary law of her race: Lie still and he may pass you by. So they gazed eye to eye while one might pant half a score of times, and then a heron, sweeping by with a shriek which ripped the silence of the night, broke the spell. With a snarl the fox leaped sideways into the bushes; and the rabbit, ears flattened, paws twitching, crouched where she was until the rush of his footsteps died away. After this adventure the White Rabbit gradually grew bolder. She lived in some ready-made burrows in the corner of the wood, and fed in the field below Garry's Hill. But if a prowling cat or fox came by, and the rest of the community dived underground, the White One merely sat at the hole's mouth and waited; and in two cases out of three the hunter, after a stealthy glance, passed on. The third case was generally a cat who, more accustomed to the mysterious ways of men, their dependents and belongings, was not afraid to stalk the White Doe of Garry's Hill.

By this time it was August, and the birds went to moult in the deepest thickets of Knockdane. Only an occasional robin sang a bar or two of his roundelay, or a chiff-chaff, who had forgotten the rhythm of his call, cried 'chaff-chaff' in the beech trees. Big spikes of purple loosestrife crowned the damper clearings, and missel thrushes went out to the fields in straggling bands. The mornings grew cooler and later, damp mists steamed up from the river, and the beeches began to turn orange and brown. One fine night the cuckoos disappeared, and the corn-crakes prepared to follow them, for the corn was ripe, and all through the hazy days the whirr of machinery was heard from the hills, like some gigantic grasshopper. The squirrels and oxeyes squabbled in the hazels, and the badgers went harvesting when the moon rose. To the Fur Folk the autumn was a faint echo of the spring. There was something in the mild, still weather, and equal hours of day and night, which stirred them to vague repetition of their doings early in the year. The rabbits wandered away from their burrows, and made desultory scrapings by the pathsides, and the birds, the throstle and pigeon, sang again half heartedly. The White Rabbit, with no idea why she did so, also dutifully scratched little holes in the moss, and followed faint trails which led nowhere in particular. However, the first frost put an end to all this; and after the frosts came the November gales, which slashed the sleet across the woods. Once or twice the men came to shoot in Knockdane, but the White Rabbit was safe enough, for she never made a 'form,' but always lay underground. In fact, there was little enough covert in that part of Knockdane in the winter, and in January, when the foxes were ravenous, the woods were quite bare. However, the White Rabbit passed unscathed through that time of peril; even the traps, which doubly decimated her companions, spared her. Nature, who had put a mark upon her which set her apart from her fellows, had in compensation gifted her with keener wits and judgment. As everybody knows, a rabbit track runs hop-dot down the hedgerow like a rosary of beads, and Paddy Magragh set his snares cunningly in the beads, which are the little patches from which the rabbits hop over the tussocks; but the White Doe went safely to and fro, merely skipping aside if the wicked loop struck her nose. Perhaps, again, it was her colour which saved her here, for many a bunny blundered into the noose when his fellows chased him in sport or anger; but the brown rabbits ignored the White Doe, and she hopped leisurely between her hole and the meadow unharmed. Nevertheless, towards the end of the winter, she, with the rest of the rabbit kind, suffered grievously from famine, for the weather had spoiled all the greenery in the woods. Here again it was the White Rabbit who first set the example of climbing into the boughs of a fallen thorn tree to gnaw a meagre sustenance from the bark of the ivy entwined in it. The idea became fashionable in her burrow; and, clambering clumsily among the branches three or four feet from the ground, the rabbits chiselled away at the ivy until its twigs were as white as bone.

With February--the famine month--the love season began in earnest. All the other rabbits who lived in the outlying collection of burrows with the White Doe, forsook them and wandered down into the woods; while up on Garry's Hill the ground was dotted with the little tufts of grey wool, ripped from one rival by another. The White Rabbit paid no attention to these changes at first, but led her own contented spinster life. The Wild Folk concern themselves very little about the doings of their neighbours; and had every rabbit in Knockdane been suddenly wiped out of existence, the White One would not have altered her habits in a single particular.

It was not until the woodcock began to mate that the White Rabbit found out that she was lonely. Then she left her burrow and went out into the woods, which was a dangerous thing to do in daylight. The robin was reciting his marriage vows to his mate under a holly bush; and the pigeons, recklessly bold, flapped lazily from tree to tree. The White Rabbit scraped enthusiastically for a few minutes, for she felt impelled to unaccountable energy that day, but when she had dug a few inches she broke off, for she could not remember what to do with the hole when she had finished it. Near at hand a buck rabbit stamped, and presently another, larger than he, came out of the bushes and fought him. The White Doe hopped towards them, but being stranger rabbits they broke off their tournament, and fled at the sight of her whiteness. She saw many rabbits that day, and half of them ran away, and the other half were indifferent. The White Rabbit had never felt so lonely before--not even when her mother had been taken from her. Presently she came upon a luckless rabbit which had been killed by a stoat an hour before. The White Rabbit did not know this, and went up to sniff at him. Here at last was something which would not run from her; but when she smelt the fresh blood and saw the wound behind his ear, she turned and galloped away. There was fear everywhere. She was feared by her own kind; and she again feared the blood-hunters. A wren caught sight of her and began to scold--it, too, was afraid. The White Rabbit was very sorrowful.

The Love Longing was not always so strong. Sometimes for weeks at a time she lived alone as happily as heretofore. Then it would break out again, and send her into the woods; but she never found a mate, although young rabbits played outside the burrows, and the birds were all nesting. So March turned to April, and April to May, and the lowest bracken fronds opened like green wings before the crimped tops were uncurled. Then again one day the Love Longing came upon the White Rabbit, and she went to the Dark Pool where the Fur Folk go to drink. There are willow saplings all round, and the chaffinches were collecting the down for nest-lining, for the seeds were ripening. On the further side the White Doe passed a rabbit's 'registry' tree. Most woods have their own registry where the buck rabbits repair in spring, and each tries to scrape away the bark and set the imprint of his teeth a little higher than his fellows. Most of the rabbit duels take place near these trees. Sometimes it is a young sycamore, or a laurel, or a beech, which is chosen out from among the rest; but in this part of Knockdane it was a willow sapling, peeled and scored for two feet above the ground, and with little paths, beaten hard by rabbity feet, converging to it from every direction. As the White Doe passed by, she saw a brown buck rabbit, on his hind legs, leisurely rubbing his whiskers against the trunk; and hopping up quietly behind him she touched him with her white nose. He darted away a few paces, and sat rigid. The White Doe approached him beseechingly and caressed him with a whisker kiss; but he only stared horror-stricken at her wonderful pink eyes, beat his fore paws once or twice in surprise and dismay, and scudded out of sight.

All that day the Love Longing would not be satisfied, and when the White Rabbit fed outside her burrow after dark, the restlessness in her grew so strong that she crept from the shadow of the trees to Garry's Hill. She had scarcely ever visited her native warren, and on the rare occasions on which she wandered thither, the whole burrow had been thrown into a panic. It was dark on the hill, for the moon was behind the clouds. The rabbit people were all munching busily, and the White Rabbit, happy in a sense of companionship, crouched near them. Now and then one bunny, in the sheer joy of living, skipped three feet into the air, and the older bucks chivied the younger ones in and out of the earthworks which many generations of excavators had thrown up. Two rabbits were playing 'tig' on the slope, dodging one another backwards and forwards. The White Doe watched their twinkling white scuts for a minute, and then, just as the moon broke from behind the clouds, with a hop, skip, and jump she launched herself playfully between the couple. They stood still for one paralysed instant, and then, stamping frantically, the whole community stampeded in every direction. The White Rabbit did not realise that she was responsible for this flight, but, believing it to mean cat or stoat, she bolted with the rest. She plunged down a burrow and scurried along never-ending corridors and side-ways. She could hear footsteps which fled before her, and all round the passages rang with muffled danger signals. At last she entered a hide-up, and hearing shuffling feet, explored it to its end. In the dark she collided with something which was furry and soft, and felt twitching whiskers brush her face. Another rabbit had taken refuge there; and surely it was--yes, it was--the noses of the Fur Folk are as trustworthy as our eyes--the same who had repulsed her in the wood that morning. But obviously he did not recognise her in the darkness, for he cowered to her at the end of the passage. There was comfort in companionship, and they huddled together, fearful lest something stealthy and terrible should sniff its way towards them. The White Rabbit thought of stoats, but the other dreaded nameless things--magic things, white things--which leaped out of the gloom. Every now and then the White Rabbit turned her head and nestled against the soft fur of the other's shoulder. Here was rabbit--normal rabbit, brown rabbit--and yet he did not shrink from her, for in her turn she felt a tremulous nose sniff at her ears....

* * * * *

An hour afterwards the business of the Garry's Hill warren went on as usual. The White Doe was still below ground, but after midnight she came out with the Brown Buck behind her. The rest of the warren stamped, but little recked she. If the Brown Buck was staggered at the sight of her in the moonlight, he did not show it. White or brown, did he not know the scent of her who had come to him in the burrow, and who perhaps had stood between him and the misty terror that had leaped upon him in the dark. This was rabbit--strange, it is true--but still rabbit and wholly lovable. He put his head under her chin that she might scratch his ears, and this is the greatest token of esteem among the rabbit kind. Thus the spell was broken, and the fear which was round the White Doe was gone, for she had become as other rabbits. She had entered into her inheritance, the inheritance of motherhood--the highest happiness known in the woods.

They nestled side by side under the old whitethorn which, for once in a way, forgot to moan as the wind went down. The moon set, and the fur of the White Doe gleamed in the starlight. But now the rabbits around only munched unconcernedly. There was no more mystery about her; for, in the words of the greatest love song ever penned, and as true of the beasts as of the men for whom it was written, she was her belovèd's, and his desire was towards her.

 

CHAPTER V

UNDER THE MOON

A little band of forewandered plover flapped southwards drearily. To the east the mountains were still encumbered with the great snowclouds which had driven over Knockdane an hour before, and converted Garry's Hill into a white sugar loaf. Now it was evening, and as the red sun sank, he flushed the fields with a dream-pink, while the moon struggled over the stormy hills.

Cuni hopped out into the cold air and shook each paw delicately, for the snow clung to them. Her eyes looked bigger and her ears longer than when we saw her last, for the cruel February weather, which spared neither the Fur nor the Feather Folk, had pressed the rabbits sorely. For weeks frost and thaw had alternated night by night, and slowly killed every green leaf and blade of grass. Sometimes cold rain fell and soaked the woods, at others snow came and covered them. Within five hundred yards of the warren there was not a tuft of grass large enough to make a 'form'; and the rabbits lay below ground in their damp burrows, and tried to deaden the hunger pain with sleep.

Although it was scarcely an hour since the snowstorm had blown by, Fluff-Button had already left Garry's Hill for the woods; and a neat trail--two little tentative punches of the forefeet over-passed by the bolder impression of the hind--indicated which path he had taken. Cuni followed him across the field. The snow was not more than two inches deep and the longest grass blades peered through it.

Knockdane Woods are surrounded by a mason-built stone wall six feet high; but in one spot the ivy, insinuating itself between the stones, has loosened them, and the smaller Fur Folk--the rabbits, rats, and stoats--have scratched a tunnel leading into the woods. Through this passage Cuni hopped, and passed from the bleakness of the white fields into an enchanted palace. Every twig and bough bore its burden of whiteness. The fir trees were converted into huge Christmas trees, and the beeches' branches were etched against a sky suffused with the illusive lilac reflections of the snow. There was an uncanny white glamour over the woods, and except for the distant roar of the unfrozen river rushing between its banks, a vast silence had fallen upon Knockdane.

Not far from the wall, in a clearing, there is a pool. It is black and stagnant, with banks overgrown with yellow pimpernel, water flags, and rushes; nevertheless many of the Fur Folk depend upon it for their water supply. To-night it was darned across with ice needles, and the silver 'cat-ice' round the edge crackled under Cuni's paws. As she expected, Fluff-Button was seated on the other bank taking a tonic. In winter when the grass is sodden and tasteless, rabbits are seized with a burning desire for strong astringent food, and they often wander far from their burrows to seek rushes, or the dry bark of saplings. To-night Fluff-Button gnawed the knotted roots of the wild iris, and as their bitterness burnt his mouth and made him sneeze, his nose quivered with pleasure. On any other night Cuni would have kept at a respectful distance from her lord; but to-night, in spite of the frost and snow, the Love Longing was beginning to awaken among the rabbit kind, and instinctively she felt that he would not repulse her. She approached him diffidently, and, instead of chasing her away, he merely glanced up and coughed. She squatted at his side and chiselled away at the iris roots, until the moon grew bright enough to light snow candles on every twig and bough.

So busy were they that they never heard the footsteps of Garry Skehan, when, half an hour later, he crossed the snowy hill to Knockdane, nor noticed how they paused at the spot where the double trail entered the wood. The woodcraft of Garry Skehan was of a rough and ready sort; for him wild creatures were divided into two broad classes--those which could be trapped and those which could not--but even he could tell that this was a rabbit run, and he chuckled over it. By and by he tramped away over the crisp snow, so softly that not even the drowsy pigeons overhead heard him.

Many of the Fur Folk passed outside the wall that night, and each one stopped to look at the place where Garry Skehan had knelt and scored the surface with his clumsy boots. First of all a rat came along, trailing his naked tail callously on the snow behind him. He gave one glance at the spot, and then hurriedly crossed the wall lower down. By and by a stoat passed. It is not in stoat nature to resist a hole wherever it may lead, and this one gingerly thrust in his nose; but at that moment he caught sight of something under his feet and drew back quietly. The mice came by and danced fairy quadrilles over the snow, but they also left the hole in the wall alone.

As the moon rose higher the frost began to bite, and the snowflakes, which had hitherto dropped rhythmically from the branches, were welded firmly together; while every leaf upon the ground was so crisped with rime that it crackled under the touch. Fluff-Button and Cuni, having made a scanty meal of such bramble leaves and ferns as remained green, turned homewards. Cuni went first, for her mate dallied behind to scratch his whiskers against a tree trunk. She came to the hole in the wall and hopped inside, for among the stones and mortar was hollowed a little chamber. There was a thin wind blowing, which had drifted the snow against the opposite opening and blocked it up, but the drift was not thick, and crumbled away when Cuni thrust her nose against it. The field was a white blank, marked with inky shadows below the trees, and not a living thing was in sight.

With one comprehensive hop Cuni alighted in the drift, and at the same instant something seized her hind leg. 'When in doubt, skip!' is the rabbit maxim, which she obeyed instantly, but she was rudely jerked back into the snow, and the grip on her leg tightened. She whisked round to see her foe, and behold there was nothing there. Cuni was terrified. She began to struggle desperately, but although the enemy's clutch tightened, there was nothing to be seen but a long strand of copper wire on the snow. Just then there was a rattle of stones, and Fluff-Button hopped through the wall. He noticed nothing amiss, and seeing that the snow was scraped away all round he began to munch the frozen grass blades. In some measure his presence reassured Cuni. She ceased to struggle, and in the perfect bliss of her mate's proximity almost forgot the mysterious enemy that held her.

Meanwhile the face of the night was changed. A snowstorm came up and drove tiny stinging flakes over the woods. They sifted into the rabbits' coats until Fluff-Button hopped inside the wall, shaking his ears. Cuni tried to follow, and although that unknown something clutched her again, yet it permitted her to creep just inside the hole. Her body prevented the entrance of the driving snow, and Fluff-Button came and snuggled against her warm vest, while his twitching whiskers left soft 'butterfly kisses' on her nose. In the mother-instinct, which is as easily awakened in the woods as among men, Cuni forgot that Fluff-Button was the King-Buck whose will was law in the warren, and only remembered that he was cold and came to her for warmth. She disregarded the snow which chilled her from without, and licked him with her warm tongue as tenderly as if he had been a sleepy suckling in the nesting burrow.

The snowstorm passed and the rabbits came out again. The moon sailed up a sky as black and mysterious as a forest pool; and drowned the stars, until only one great white one survived, and blinked down like a wicked eye. Fluff-Button hopped away evidently expecting his mate to follow him, and was much perplexed to find that she was unable to do so. He sniffed her all over carefully, beseeching her to accompany him. Cuni tried her best, but in vain, and lay down panting. Fluff-Button became seriously annoyed. He was not used to disobedience, and it must be told that he kicked his mate hard with his strong hind leg. Finding that this did no good, he became alarmed. Wild creatures hate and fear the unknown, and Cuni's predicament was a most uncanny thing to rabbit ideas. Fluff-Button hopped away and began to feed doubtfully on an old turnip rind some thirty yards off, and took no notice of his mate's signals and struggles.

At last Cuni lay still and watched him. Nature is kind to her wild children, and after the first biting coldness of the snow sends a blessed lethargy which soothes away the pain. Cuni was fast drifting into this dreamy state when her senses suddenly returned to her and she sat up alertly. Silhouetted against the white field stole a lithe form--pads which made no noise, eyes gleaming faintly red, ears cocked forward towards the prey ahead of him in the snow, while the moonlight laid a long grotesque shadow behind. The fox was thin and weak with famine, and his whole attention was riveted upon Fluff-Button, who sat with his back turned. He began to stalk his victim as noiselessly as a cat, taking advantage of every ant-hill or snowdrift to screen himself.

There are two laws which have been given to the rabbit kind in the hour of danger. One is, 'Squat and be still'; and the other is, 'Scoot, if you will, but let your fellows know it.' A few rabbits obey the first all their lives; but the majority--Cuni among the number--'scoot' on an alarm, but as they run they stamp upon the ground that their friends may hear and do likewise. However, Cuni was wounded, and her wise instinct bade her lie still, and then the fox would pass her by. With frightened fascinated eyes she watched the dark form slide over the snow, clapping flat if the unconscious Fluff-Button chanced to move.

'Lie still,' whispered Instinct, numbing her limbs with fear, 'he will never see you.' But the Angel who works for the good of the race, and who sacrifices his units that his tens may be saved, cried: 'Stamp aloud and warn him, no matter what it may cost.' The two impulses struggled together in Cuni's heart, and the fox cramped his limbs together for the final rush.

'Thump!' It was a very feeble little sound, muffled by the soft snow. 'Again!' cried the stronger Angel, and summoning up all her strength, Cuni stamped again. This time Fluff-Button heard. Without as much as a glance behind, he bolted for the wall, leaped over his mate, dashed into the tunnel, and the scurry of his steps died away.

The fox checked abruptly; he knew that in the woods he had no chance against a cunning buck rabbit, and if Cuni had lain still perhaps all might have been well. Unluckily panic seized her, and, stamping again and again, she struggled for her freedom. The fox saw her and began to stalk anew, for there seemed something uncanny about this rabbit, and he dared not risk a rush too soon. Cuni forgot her pain, she forgot her fear and even that desire to live which is so firmly implanted in each one of the Fur Folk, in her overmastering rage at the thing which held her. With tooth and claw she attacked the peg round which the wire was twisted, but the frost had bound it firmly to the snow. Ah! a last spasmodic jerk wrenched it up, and trailing a broken leg, Cuni crept into the wall--free. Alas! just the other side she was brought up with a jerk. The peg was wedged between two stones, and she was as much a prisoner as ever, although just beyond the fox's reach. She heard his stealthy pads scrunch on the snow the other side of the wall, and then he found the hole. He lay down on his side and thrust his head into the opening; and when he snorted, Cuni felt his hot breath on her whiskers. He began to whimper eagerly, and scrape at the loose stones and mortar. He worked his shoulders further and further in, and the little chamber was filled with dust. Presently he drew back--his cunning wits had told him of a better way. Just here the wall was too high to leap, but further down it was lower, and there he could climb over. Cuni heard his footsteps tiptoe away, and then her Guardian Angel whispered that her teeth were sharp and pointed out a way to freedom--but not the cost. She listened to the counsel, for the desire to live burnt fiercely within her and her leg was twisted and useless now, a mere encumbrance. There was a short, sharp struggle, and the snare and its captive were parted indeed. Stiff and numbed, she crept away among the trees.

Twenty yards further on there was a clearing where the snow lay soft and deep. Here Fluff-Button's trail could be seen plainly, and the wide tracks showed that he had crossed it at full gallop. Cuni set out to follow it, plodding along in the muffling snow, and stumbling into drifts at every step. The woods were dead--neither Fur nor Feather Folk stirred--and Fluff-Button's solitary trail alone broke the blankness before her; but whereas his consisted of four regular punctures, that which she left beside it had three only, and, in place of the fourth, a red stain. She dared not pause, for the twilight was full of a horror which was all the greater that it was nameless and but dimly realised--the fear of the hunted when strength fails. The shadows seemed full of shining eyes and crouching forms which would spring if she lay down, for she did not know that the fox had already given up the quest, and left her alone.

The snow was soft and deadly cold. It clogged her limbs like so much clay, and the very air was so chilled that she seemed to draw her breath in nothingness.

Still Fluff-Button's trail ran forward towards the Pine Tree burrows, which are warm and deep, and down which no fox can pass; and Cuni stumbled on blindly, for it is the instinct of the Fur Folk when maimed or sick to death to seek some hiding-place where not even the stars can spy upon them.

Presently she fell into a deeper drift, and because she was too tired to struggle out, she lay still. It was good to rest awhile before setting out once more, and feel the pain and fear slip away before the blessed peace which stole over her. The snow now seemed so warm and dark that she believed herself in the Pine Tree burrows, and nestled down as contentedly as if she leaned against Fluff-Button's soft coat. Her nose ceased to quiver as her breath came more and more faintly, and her big brown eye closed; while her spirit drifted further and further away, until it silently crossed the borderland into the country from which there is no return.

A cloud blotted out the moon and wrapped the woods from end to end in the vast silence of snow. Great flakes as big as pigeon's feathers floated down into the clearing. The double trail was covered up, and the drifts piled higher and higher, until not even the tip of a dark ear peeped out to show where little Cuni lay.

[The end]
M. D. Haviland's short story: Story Of Fluff-Button The Rabbit

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