70 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



I have seen him leap for his life as the dog sighted 

 him, and, bounding like a ball across the stubble, 

 disappear in the woods, the hound within two jumps 

 of his flashing tail. I have waited at the end of the 

 wood-road for the runners to come back, down the 

 home-stretch, for the finish. On they go through 

 the woods, for a quarter, or perhaps a half a mile, 

 the baying of the hound faint and intermittent 

 in the distance, then quite lost. No, there it is again, 

 louder now. They have turned the course. 



I wait. 



The quiet life of the woods is undisturbed ; for 

 the voice of the hound is only an echo, not unlike 

 the far-off tolling of a slow-swinging bell. The 

 leaves stir as a wood mouse scurries from his stump ; 

 an acorn rattles down ; then in the winding wood- 

 road I hear the pit-pat, pit-pat, of soft furry feet, 

 and there at the bend is the rabbit. He stops, rises 

 high up on his haunches, and listens. He drops again 

 upon all fours, scratches himself behind the ear, 

 reaches over the cart-rut for a nip of sassafras, hops 

 a little nearer, and throws his big ears forward in 

 quick alarm, for he sees me, and, as if something 

 had exploded under him, he kicks into the air and 

 is off, leaving a pretty tangle for the dog to un- 

 ravel, later on, by this mighty jump to the side. 



My children and a woodchopper were witnesses re- 

 cently of an exciting, and, for this section of Mas- 

 sachusetts, a novel race, which, but for them, must 



