n to the top of the lot. This place smells
horrible. And look you here, Giles," he added in a voice of thunder, "if
ever I find you killing a fox upon this property, you will be dismissed
at once, as I have often told you before. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Squire, I understand," answered Giles, "and I'll see to the
burying of them this same afternoon, if the pain in my hand will suffer
it."

"Very well," said the Red-faced Man, "that's done with--except the cubs.
As you have killed the vixen you had better stink the cubs out of the
earth. I daresay they are old enough to look after themselves--at any
rate I hope so. And now, Giles, we must shoot some of these hares when
we begin on the partridges next week. There are too many of them, the
tenants are complaining, ungrateful beggars as they are, seeing that I
keep them for their sport."

At this point I thought that I had heard enough, and slipped away when
their backs were turned. For, friend Mahatma, I had just seen a fox
shot, and now I knew what shooting meant.

*****

About a week later I knew better still. It came about thus. By that
time the turnips I have mentioned, those that grew in the big field, had
swelled into fine, large bulbs with leafy tops. We used to eat them at
nights, and in the daytime to lie up among them in our snug forms. You
know, Mahatma, don't you, that a form is a little hollow which a hare
makes in the ground just to fit itself? No hare likes to sleep in
another hare's form. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I answered, "I understand. It would be like a man wearing another
man's boots."

"I don't know anything about boots Mahatma, except that they are hard
things with iron on them which kick one out of one's form if one
sits too close. Once that happened to me. Well, my form was under a
particularly fine turnip that had some dead leaves beneath the green
ones. I chose it because, like the brown earth, they just matched the
colour of my back. I was sleeping there quite soundly when my sister
came and woke me.

"There are men in the field," she said, her eyes nearly starting out of
her head with fear, for she was always very timid.

"I'm off."

"Are you?" I answered. "Well, I think I shall stop here where I shan't
be noticed. If we begin jumping over those turnips they will see us."

"We might run down the rows, keeping our ears close to our backs," she
remarked.

"No," I said, "there are too many bare patches."

At this moment a g