gh. Not wide, but clear.
Cut everything like a creeper across them and some day you will find you
have cut a snare. "A what?" asked Rag, as he scratched his right ear
with his left hind foot.

"A snare is something that looks like a creeper, but it doesn't grow and
it's worse than all the hawks in the world," said Molly, glancing at the
now far-away red-tail, "for there it hides night and day in the runway
till the chance to catch you comes."

"I don't believe it could catch me," said Rag, with the pride of youth
as he rose on his heels to rub his chin and whiskers high up on a smooth
sapling. Rag did not know he was doing this, but his mother saw and
knew it was a sign, like the changing of a boy's voice, that her little
one was no longer a baby but would soon be a grown-up Cottontail.

V

There is magic in running water. Who does not know it and feel it? The
railroad builder fearlessly throws his bank across the wide bog or lake,
or the sea itself, but the tiniest rill of running water he treats with
great respect, studies its wish and its way and gives it all it seems to
ask. The thirst-parched traveller in the poisonous alkali deserts holds
back in deadly fear from the sedgy ponds till he finds one down whose
centre is a thin, clear line, and a faint flow, the sign of running,
living water, and joyfully he drinks.

There is magic in running water, no evil spell can cross it. Tam
O'Shanter proved its potency in time of sorest need. The wild-wood
creature with its deadly foe following tireless on the trail scent,
realizes its nearing doom and feels an awful spell. Its strength is
spent, its every trick is tried in vain till the good Angel leads it to
the water, the running, living water, and dashing in it follows the
cooling stream, and then with force renewed takes to the woods again.

There is magic in running water. The hounds come to the very spot and
halt and cast about; and halt and cast in vain. Their spell is broken by
the merry stream, and the wild thing lives its life.

And this was one of the great secrets that Raggylug learned from his
mother--"after the Brierrose, the Water is your friend."

One hot, muggy night in August, Molly led Rag through the woods. The
cotton-white cushion she wore under her tail twinkled ahead and was his
guiding lantern, though it went out as soon as she stopped and sat on
it. After a few runs and stops to listen, they came to the edge of the
pond. The hylas in t