h the murmuring stream
wanders towards the village bridge; but the peaceful uplands beyond
rarely greet the vision. For many years I was wont to look from my
window only at the woods and the meadows, and somehow I was accustomed
to imagine that the line of my vision was bounded by the top of the
wood. It was not till more than usual interest had been awakened in me
concerning the wild life inhabiting the cornfield, that my eyes were
daily turned in the direction of the uplands, where, every evening, the
rooks disappear from sight on their way to the tall elms in a
neighbouring valley.

Except during harvest, the cornfield is seldom visited by the country
folk. It lies away from the main road, and the nearest approach to it is
by a grass-grown lane leading from some ruined cottages to a farmstead
in the middle of the estate. Many years ago, it was a wilderness of
furze and briar, one of the thickest coverts on the countryside,
affording safe sanctuary for fox and badger. But gradually it has been
reclaimed, till now only a belt of undergrowth, scarcely twenty yards
wide, stretches along the horizon between the upper hedgerow and the
wheat.

Here, one starry April night, in a snug "form" prepared by the mother
hare, a leveret was born. The "form" was hardly more than a depression
in the rank grass, to which, for some time past, the doe had been in the
habit of resorting at dawn, that she might hide secure through the day,
till the dusk brought with it renewed confidence, and tempted her away
into the open meadows beyond the cornfield, where the young clover grew
green and succulent. A thick gorse-bush, decked with a wealth of yellow
bloom, grew by the side of the "form," and, all around, the matted grass
and brambles made a labyrinth, pathless, save for the winding "run" by
which the hare approached or left her home.

Unlike the offspring of the rabbit--born blind and naked in an
underground nest lined with its parent's fur--the leveret was covered
with down, and her eyes were open, from the hour of birth. Nature had
fitted her for an existence in the open air. At first she was suckled by
day as well as by night, but as she grew older she seldom felt the want
of food till dark. While light remained, she squatted motionless by her
mother's side in the "form," protected by the resemblance in colour
between her coat and the surrounding herbage, where the browns and greys
of last autumn might still be seen among the brambl