earing, and so swift is her "stoop" from the sky to the ground, that
the bank-vole has little chance of escape should a single grass-stalk
rustle underfoot when she is hovering near his haunt. Far from being shy
and retiring in her disposition, the brown owl, directly night steals
over the woodlands, is so fearless that probably no animal smaller than
the hare can in safety roam abroad.

As the owl flew slowly past the fence, she heard the faint sound of a
crackling shell--the hedgehogs were feeding on snails. She could barely
distinguish a moving form in a tangle of briars, but its position
discouraged attack; so she flew away and continued to hunt for mice.
Presently, returning to the spot, the owl was once more attracted by the
sound of some creature feeding in the grass; and, detecting a slight
movement beside the briars, she swooped towards the ditch, grasped one
of the "urchins" in her claws, and rose into the air. Her quarry,
feeling the sudden grip of the sharp talons, made a desperate,
convulsive movement, and the owl found, to her astonishment, that her
grasp had shifted, and that she was holding, apparently, a hard bunch of
thorns. Nevertheless, she tightened her grasp; but an unendurable twitch
of pain, as the spines entered her flesh immediately above the scales of
her talons, caused her to drop the hedgehog into the leaf-mould of the
ditch. Immediately afterwards, she herself, eager to find out the cause
of her discomfiture, dropped also to the earth, and, standing beside the
hedgehog, clawed savagely at the motionless creature, seeking some
defenceless point among the bristling spines. At last, her patience
exhausted, the owl gave up the ineffectual assault, and glided away into
the gloomy night. Unhurt, but for a slight wound inflicted when first
the bird descended, the hedgehog crawled back to the brambles, where the
rest of her family were still busy with the snails, and joined them in
their feast.

Autumn's sere leaves had fallen from the trees, and the hedgehogs had
found such a plentiful supply of all kinds of food that they were ready
for their winter sleep, when a gipsy boy, the proud possessor of a
terrier trained for hunting hedgehogs, set forth in haste one evening
from his tent by the wayside above the farm. The boy was smarting from
cruel blows inflicted by his drunken parents, who, after unusual success
in disposing of baskets and clothes-pegs, had spent much of the day's
profit in a carous