ietly into the ditch and seized him,
and put him into a hole. To my surprise he refused to go in--I pushed
him: he returned and continued to try to come out till I gave him a
sharp fillip with the finger, when he shook the dust and particles of
dry earth from his fur with a shiver, as if in protest, and slowly
disappeared inside the hole.

As I was creeping out of the deep ditch on hands and knees, I heard
Orion call angrily to the spaniel to come to heel. Hitherto the spaniel
had sat on his haunches behind Orion fairly quiet and still, though not
without an occasional restless movement. But now he broke suddenly from
all control, and disregarding Orion's anger--though with hanging
tail--rushed into the hedge, and along the top of the mound where there
was a thick mass of dead grass. Little John hurled a clod of clay at
him, but before I was quite out of the ditch the spaniel gave tongue,
and at the same moment I saw a rabbit come from the ditch and run like
mad across the field.

The dog gave chase--I rushed for my gun, which was some yards off,
placed against a hollow withy tree. The haste disconcerted the aim--the
rabbit too was almost fifty yards away when I fired. But the shot broke
one hind leg--it trailed behind--and the spaniel had him instantly.
'Look at yer nets,' said Little John in a tone of suppressed
indignation, for he disliked the noise of a gun, as all other noises.

I did look, and found that one net had been partly pushed aside; yet to
so small an extent that I should hardly have believed it possible for
the rabbit to have crept through. He must have slipped out without the
slightest sound and quietly got on the top of the mound without being
seen. But there, alas! he found a wide net stretched right across the
bank so that to slip down the mound on the top was impossible. This
would certainly have been his course had not the net been there.

It was now doubtless that the spaniel caught wind of him, and the scent
was so strong that it overcame his obedience. The moment the dog got on
the bank, the rabbit slipped down into the rushes in the ditch--I did
not see him because my back was turned in the act to scramble out. Then,
directly the spaniel gave tongue the rabbit darted for the open, hoping
to reach the buries in the hedge on the opposite side of the meadow.

This incident explained why the ferret seemed so loth to go back into
the hole. He had crept out some few moments behind the rabbit and