CARN BREA ABANDONED 13 



chops over you yet, both you and your tender 

 young ones." Then, the rumble of wheels 

 urging her, she hurried away, her beautiful coat 

 all aripple with the play of her lissom limbs. As 

 soon as she had crossed the wall, the hare, 

 who had observed her from behind the blades, 

 resumed the suckling of her frightened young, 

 fondling them as she had never done before. 



It had been a narrow escape, and the hare 

 was now all impatience to forsake the hill. 

 But that could not be before nightfall, so she 

 and the leverets spent the long day unnerved 

 by the rank scent left by the fox on the herb- 

 age. The slow sun at last sank beneath the sea. 

 At once the hare took the doe leveret in her 

 mouth and carried it along the southern flank 

 of the chain for more than a mile to the foot 

 of Bartinney, where she laid it in a patch of 

 bracken bordering a little green. The next 

 moment she was on her way back at her best 

 pace, as though she dreaded that the vixen might 

 forestall her. But no enemy was ■ to be seen : 

 the jack was as she had left him. Seizing him 

 by the skin of the neck she bore him rapidly 

 along despite his kicking, crouching whilst two 

 stoats passed, dropping him thrice to rest herself, 

 and finally depositing him in a clump of rushes 

 by a rill some score yards from his sister. It 



