her more formidable foes, the beagles. At first she eluded
them by stealing off without yielding the faintest scent; but she was
"viewed" in crossing the meadow, and the hounds, making a long, wide
cast, "picked up" as soon as a slight, increasing taint in the air was
perceptible, then followed for several miles. But, ultimately, they were
baffled, and Puss made good her escape.

It had happened that, after creeping through a gutter in the hedgerow of
a stubble, she had come in sight of a flock of sheep grazing on the
opposite side. Like Vulp, the fox, she knew how to hinder the chase by
mingling her scent with that of other animals; so without hesitation she
passed through the flock, and made straight for an open gateway in the
far corner of the field. When the beagles, in hot pursuit, appeared on
the scene, the startled sheep, rushing away, took the line of the hunted
hare through the opening, and thus "fouled" the scent so thoroughly
that the hunt came to a "check." After the hare had left the fields
frequented by the sheep, she took the direction of a path leading over a
wide bog towards the woodland. On the damp ground the scent lay so
badly, that when, some time later, the beagles crossed her line, they
were unable, even after repeated "casts," to follow her track. Presently
the impatient huntsman, with hounds at heel, moved away to the nearest
road and relinquished his quest.

Luckily for Puss, the harriers never visited her neighbourhood, and only
on special occasions was coursing permitted on the estate. If at night a
lurcher entered the field in which she grazed amid the clover, her
knowledge of the poacher's artifices immediately prompted her to slip
over the hedge and past the treacherous nets. Her life, beset with
hidden dangers, was preserved by a chain of wonderfully favourable
circumstances, that befriended her even when the utmost caution and
vigilance had been unavailing.

Once, so mild was the winter that the hare's first family for the year
came into the world in January. A few weeks afterwards, when she was
about to separate from her leverets, an incident occurred that might
have been attended with fatal results. A poacher, prowling along the far
side of the hedgerow, and occasionally stopping to peep through the
bushes for partridges "jugging" in the grass-field, caught sight of the
leverets nibbling the clover near a small blackthorn. In the feeble
afterglow, he was uncertain that the objects be