A HARE IN THE SNOW 



just as Thomas Goodwin had expected. There was 

 much less snow here than within half a dozen miles. 

 Passing a thick piece of bracken, below a warm, 

 sheltering wall of dark green gorse, the man's keen 

 eye noted the brown skin of a great doe-hare, nestling 

 snugly in the form in which she had so recently en- 

 sconced herself. His eye carefully avoided hers ; if 

 they had met, ten to one the hare would have leaped 

 out and fled incontinently. He looked carelessly be- 

 yond, as if he had never seen her ; but just as he 

 passed her he gave one swift whirl of his crab-tree 

 staff, which, crashing into the skull of the hare, 

 stretched her instantly dead. She gave one convulsive 

 kick with her strong hind-feet, and lay there in her 

 form quite still. As Goodwin picked her up by her 

 hind-legs a few drops of blood fell upon the snow, 

 leaving neat circular patches of crimson staining the 

 pure, untrodden surface. Goodwin hastily kicked 

 some snow over the tell-tale gouts, and then, undoing 

 his belt and bestowing the hare beneath his smock, he 

 belted up again, picked up his staff, and with elastic 

 footsteps plunged into the woodland and betook him- 

 self by another and more sheltered way back to his 

 cottage again. 



Within an hour the hare was skinned, cut up, and 

 simmering in an iron pot, while Thomas and his 

 wife, wonderfully brightened by this unexpected 

 piece of good fortune, were devising fresh plans for 

 the future. 



But, alas ! Goodwin's successful raid upon the hare 

 had not been entirely unperceived. Just as Thomas 

 crossed that angle of the park and first caught sight 

 of the footprints and halted. Sir Edmund Wing had 

 entered his dining-hall, and before falling to breakfast, 

 happened to be surveying the landscape, musing upon 

 N 177 



