her
pads, her brush, or racing over the grassy plot, frolicking with each
other till some little temper was aroused and play degenerated into a
fight. In general, they behaved like wild children without a thought of
care, yet they never went beyond the grass-fringe into the thicket, and
to each low note of warning or encouragement from their dam they gave
immediate attention. Sometimes the vixen bounded gaily about the edge of
the gorse, stooping again and again to snap with pretended rage at one
or another of her offspring. But for most of the time she remained in
her lair, listening intently for the slightest sound of danger, and
guarding the only approach through the bushes.

I longed to discover what she would have done had I suddenly come upon
her and cut off her retreat, but I dared not move for fear of raising
alarm. It is more than likely that, finding me in the path, she,
snarling and hissing, would have dashed without hesitation into any part
of the furze-brake, and her young would have followed with desperate
haste and vanished at her heels within the shadows.

By-and-by she led her little ones back through the run-way, and when, a
few minutes afterwards, I stole to the outer edge of the thicket, I saw
the merry family stooping in a row beside the rill, and lapping the
cool, delicious water, which refreshed them after their rough-and-tumble
sport. From the rill they wandered off into the gloom beneath the
beech-trees, and I, satisfied with having added to my knowledge of the
life of the woods, returned homewards in the light of the rising moon.

II.

THE CRAG OF VORTIGERN.

One of the chief difficulties with which the naturalist has to contend
while watching at night is the frequent invisibility of wild creatures
among the shadows, even when the full moon is high and unclouded. The
contrasts of light and shade are far more marked by night than by day;
by night everything seems severely white where the moonbeams glance
between the trees, or over the fields, or on the river, and the shadows
are colourless, mysterious, profound; whereas by day variety of tone and
colour may be observed in both light and shade, and every hour new and
unexpected charms are unfolded in bewildering succession.

The wild creatures of the night often seem to be aware of their
invisibility in the gloom, and of the risk they run while crossing open
spaces towards trees and hedgerows where an enemy may lurk awaiting
their