CHAPTER II 



EDUCATION 



The low summons of the hare drew the 

 leverets to her side, and when she set out they 

 followed close at her heels. Late as she was 

 in starting, she picked her way down the rough 

 foothills very slowly and with extreme caution ; 

 indeed, so halting was her advance, so mis- 

 trustful was she of every rock and bush, that 

 she might have been Fear herself leading her 

 offspring past ambuscades. But the moment 

 she set foot on the reclaimed land — the field 

 where the linnet was roosting by her empty 

 nest — she quickened her steps and passed rapidly 

 from enclosure to enclosure, the novices wonder- 

 ing at the smoothness of the ground and 

 shrinking from the shadows cast by the gates 

 under which they crept. 



Soon the little band entered the grassy lane 

 which led past the magpie's elder to the farm- 

 house, and there the leverets got a scare from 

 some fowls packed as close as they could sit 



