This time, however, she had not to deal with
Juno, the setter, but with a trained lurcher, borrowed for the occasion
from a keeper who had captured the animal during a poaching affray. The
leveret, peeping over the grass-tops, saw the dog coming rapidly on. He
was over and past her in an instant. As he turned, she started off
straight towards an opening where some sheep had partly broken down the
hedge. The lurcher closed in, and drove her thither at tremendous speed.
She strained every nerve, and, gaining the ditch, blundered blindly
through the gap, and fell, helpless and inert, entangled completely
within the treacherous folds of the unseen net. Her piteous cries,
tremulous, wailing, heart-rending--similar to the cries of a suffering
infant--were borne far and wide on the wind. The keeper soon reached the
spot, and, placing his hand over her mouth to stop the cries, tenderly
extricated the frightened creature from the treacherous meshes and
allowed her to go free. For a few seconds, she lay in abject fright,
panting and unable to move. Then, hearing the cries of another hare
entangled in a bag-net some distance away, she bounded to her feet, and
darted off--somewhere, anywhere, so long as she might leave the awful
peril behind. Bewildered, but with every instinct assisting her in the
desire for life, she ran along by the hedgerow, and, unexpectedly
catching sight of a familiar gate, crouched and passed quickly through
the "creep" beneath the lowest bar. But here, again, a net was spread;
again the hare fell screaming and struggling into the meshes; and again
the keeper released her. Exhausted by intense excitement and fear, she
crawled into the "trash" in the ditch, and kept in hiding, not daring
the risk of another capture. Luckily for Puss, the lurcher had already
hunted the field in which she was now secreted, and so the timid
creature remained undisturbed beneath the fern. When her wildly
throbbing heart had been quieted by rest and solitude, she stole from
her hiding place to nibble the clover at the side of the path. Towards
dawn, she journeyed to a wide stretch of moorland on the opposite hills,
and there made a new "form" on a rough bank that separated a reedy
hollow from the undulating wilderness of heather and fern.

The leveret's adventures were destined to effect a considerable change
in her habits. She was being roughly taught that to preserve her life
she must be ever cautious and vigilant. Though dange