es, with here and
there a weather-worn stone or the fresh castings from a field-vole's
burrow. In the gloaming, she followed her mother through the "creeps"
amid the furze-brake, and sometimes to the edge of the thicket as far as
the gap, where she learned to nibble the tastiest leaves in the grass.
But soon after nightfall, she was generally alone for some hours while
the doe wandered in search of food.

Before daybreak, the doe always returned to suckle her little one. Often
in the quiet night, the leveret, feeling lonely or afraid, would call in
a low, tremulous voice for help. If the doe was within hearing she
immediately responded; but frequently the cry, "leek, leek," did not
reach the roaming hare, and the leveret, crouching in the undergrowth,
had to wait till she heard her mother's welcome call. Soon the little
home in the thicket was deserted, and the leveret accompanied her
mother on her nightly journeys till the fields and the woods for miles
around became familiar.

About a month after her birth, the leveret, having grown so rapidly that
she was able to take care of herself, parted from her mother, and,
crossing the boundary hedge of the estate, took up her quarters on the
opposite side of the valley. The doe and her leveret had lived happily
in the cornfield and the meadows above the wood. The mother had attended
with utmost solicitude to the wants of her offspring, allowing no
intruder among her kindred to trespass on her own particular haunts, and
careful to select for each day's hiding place some sequestered spot
where a human footstep was seldom heard, and the noise of the farmyard
sounded faint and remote.

The leveret had learned, partly through a wonderful instinct and partly
through her mother's teaching, how to act when there was cause for
alarm. Immediately on detecting the presence of an intruder, she lay as
still as the stone beside the ant-heap near, trusting that she would not
be distinguished from her surroundings. But if flight was absolutely
necessary, she sped away towards the nearest gap, and thence over
pasture and cornfield, always up-hill if possible, out-distancing any
probable pursuer by the marvellous power of her long hind-limbs.

During the late summer and the early autumn, nothing occurred to
endanger the leveret's life. The corn grew tall and slowly ripened. Amid
its cool shadows the leveret dwelt in solitude. Her "creeps" were out of
sight beneath the arching stalks. A gut