THE HAUNT OF THE HARE: 149 



the cover. These poles are visited every morning 

 when the trap is there, and the captured creature 

 put out of pain. Of the cruelty of the trap itself 

 there can be no doubt ; but it is very unjust to assume 

 that therefore those connected with sport are person- 

 ally cruel. In a farmhouse much frequented by rats, 

 and from which they cannot be driven out, these 

 animals are said to have discovered a means of defy- 

 ing the gin set for them. One such gin was placed 

 in the cheese-room, near a hole from which they 

 issued, but they dragged together pieces of straw, 

 little fragments of wood, and various odds and ends, 

 and so covered the pan that the trap could not spring. 

 They formed, in fact, a bridge over it. 



Eed and yellow fungi mark decaying places on the 

 trunks and branches of the trees ; their colour is 

 brightest when the boughs are bare. By a streamlet 

 wandering into the osier beds the winter gnats dance 

 in the sunshine, round about an old post covered 

 with ivy, on which green berries are thick. The 

 warm sunshine gladdens the hearts of the moorhens 

 floating on the water yonder by the bushes, and their 

 singular note, " coorg-coorg," is uttered at intervals. 

 In the plantation close to the house a fox resides as 

 safe as King Louis in " Quentin Durward," sur- 

 rounded with his guards and archers and fortified 

 towers, though tokens of his midnight rambles, in 

 the shape of bones, strew the front of his castle. He 

 crosses the lawn in sight of the windows occasionally, 

 as if he really knew and understood that his life is 

 absolutely safe at ordinary times, and that he need 

 beware of nothing but the hounds. 



