a singularly harmless conflict, neither suffering more than the
loss of a few tufts of fur. The comedy might, however, have had a tragic
ending. Presently one of the combatants--the hare that had come late on
the scene--became slightly exhausted, and, ignominiously yielding to his
rival's superior dexterity, ran back towards the distant hedge. Almost
at once a fox crept out from the furze at the corner of the field, and
trotted away on the scent of the fleeing hare, while Puss and her mate
made off in the direction of a more secluded pasture.

A month passed--a month of general hilarity and indiscriminate fighting
among all the hares in the district--and then, within a neat, dry
"form," that Puss, with a mother's solicitude, had made in a carefully
selected spot on a mound where the grass was tall and thick, her little
leveret was "kittled." The doe-hare tended her offspring as carefully as
she herself had been tended a year before. Her faithless lover had gone
his own way. But Puss cared little for his desertion: she wished to live
alone, under no monopoly as far as her affections were concerned, though
for the time her leveret wholly engaged her mothering love.

So strong was her strange new passion that she was ready, if needs be,
to brave death in defence of her young. And, not long after the
leveret's birth, the mother's courage was tested to the utmost. A
peregrine falcon, from the wild, rocky coast to the west, came sailing
on wide-reaching wings across the April sky. Puss was resting in a clump
of brambles not far from her "form," and saw the big hawk flying swiftly
above. Any movement on her part would have instantly attracted the
attention of her foe, so she squatted motionless, while her leveret
also instinctively lay still in its "form." But the keen eyes of the
falcon detected the young hare, and the bird descended like a stone on
his helpless victim. Instantly, the doe rushed to the rescue, and,
effectually warding the attack, received the full force of the "stoop"
on her shoulders. As the hawk rose into the air, the doe felt a sharp
pain in one of her ears--the big talons, closing in their grasp, had
ripped it as with the edge of a knife. She screamed, then, grunting
savagely, leaped hither and thither around the leveret, meanwhile urging
it to escape into the adjacent thicket. The bird, aloft in the air,
seemed perplexed, and eventually prepared to "stoop" again. In the nick
of time, Puss vanished with