2 CHAPEL CARN BREA 



ago, there came a hare in search of a spot to 

 which she might safely commit her young. She 

 was hard to satisfy, rejecting for this reason or 

 for that a score of harbourages that competed 

 for her favour. One night she all but decided on 

 a bramble-patch near the top of Caer Bran ; 

 the next she fancied first a heathery knoll on 

 Bartinney, then an abandoned mine-heap on 

 Sancreed Beacon ; and at the last moment re- 

 jected both for the western slope of Chapel Carn 

 Brea, partly on account of its uninterrupted 

 outlook, but more because it was less overrun 

 than the sister hills by the predatory creatures 

 that infested the countryside. All through the 

 month of March she had not seen a polecat 

 or even a stoat upon the hillside ; only once had 

 she detected on it the trail of an enemy ; so with 

 a feeling of security the timorous mother en- 

 trusted her young to its keeping, laying them in 

 a tussock of coarse grass near a ruined chantry. 



They were pretty little things with wide-open 

 eyes, distinguishable by only the white star in the 

 forehead of the male and the greater restless- 

 ness that he displayed. The tiny fellow, as if 

 eager to explore the world into which he had 

 just been born, was all agog to be out and 

 about in the afterglow, and had not his mother 

 checked him till the impulse passed, he would have 



