eeding body
handed over to its original discoverer.

Not a soul there had a single thought of pity for the creature; they
went back to work pleased, excited, amused. It was a good story to
tell for a week, and the man who had struck the last blows became a
little hero for his deftness. The old savage instinct for prey had
swept fiercely up from the bottom of these rough hearts--hearts
capable, too, of tenderness and grief, of compassion for suffering,
gentle with women and children. It seems to be impossible to blame
them, and such blame would have been looked upon as silly and misplaced
sentiment. Probably not even an offer of money, far in excess of the
market value of the dead body, if the hare could be caught unharmed,
would have prevailed at the moment over the instinct for blood.

There are many hares in the world, no doubt, and _nous sommes tous
condamnes_. But that the power which could call into being so
harmless, pretty, and delicately organised a creature does not care or
is unable to protect it better, is a strange mystery. It cannot be
supposed that the hare's innocent life deserved such chastisement; and
it is difficult to believe that suffering, helplessly endured at one
point of the creation, can be remedial at another. Yet one cannot bear
to think that the extremity of terror and pain, thus borne by a
sensitive creature, either comes of neglect, or of cruel purpose, or is
merely wasted. And yet the chase and the slaughter of the unhappy
thing cannot be anything but debasing to those who took part in it.
And at the same time, to be angry and sorry over so wretched an episode
seems like trying to be wiser than the mind that made us. What single
gleam of brightness is it possible to extract from the pitiful little
story? Only this: that there must lie some tender secret, not only
behind what seems a deed of unnecessary cruelty, but in the implanting
in us of the instinct to grieve with a miserable indignation over a
thing we cannot cure, and even in the withholding from us any hope that
might hint at the solution of the mystery.

But the thought of the seemly fur stained and bedabbled, the bright
hazel eyes troubled with the fear of death, the silky ears, in which
rang the horrid din of pursuit, rises before me as I write, and casts
me back into the sad mood, that makes one feel that the closer that one
gazes into the sorrowful texture of the world, the more glad we may
well be to depart.