44 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



heather-stems where the insects har- fortunately, in their extended round, 



boured on which they were chiefly to they encroached on a piece of wheat and 



subsist. The old badger, jealous of their not only made a wide road across it but, 



safety, kept listening whilst they for- what caused even more damage, rolled 



aged, but nothing happened to justify in a dozen places on either side of their 



her fears. The only sound that even track. This favourite resort of the 



caused the cubs to prick their ears was badgers occupied a remote corner of 



the bark of a fox on the hills beyond the holding and, partly perhaps because 



the homestead. of this, remained long unvisited by the 



Before a fortnight had passed every farmer. At last, however, the trespass 

 yard of the cliff-top had been ran- was noticed. At a glance the farmer 

 sacked for prey again and again, till, knew who had wrought the havoc and 

 finding it hard to pick up a living, the as quickly formed his plan of retribution 

 male cub, ever more forward than his against the delinquents. During the 

 sister, longed to reach the field he could dinner hour he said to his son in a voice 

 see between the crevices of the piled that showed he was still angry: " They 

 stones. He knew it was forbidden badgers have made a tarble mess of the 

 ground, but that only made it the more Five Acres : set a ' grain ' in the brambly 

 tempting ; and at last seizing the oppor- corner by the Tinners' Field : I see they 

 tunity when his mother was grubbing come in there" ; and soon after milking- 

 in a thick bush, he scrambled over the time the son set a running noose at 

 wall and succeeded in getting half-way the mouth of the creep. Three nights 

 across the enclosure before he was later the female cub was caught, and 

 discovered and brought back. The in the morning the farmer found her 

 incorrigible fellow broke bounds again in the wire dead, 

 the next night ; whereupon his mother, Henceforth the old badger centred 

 recognizing that the headland was all her care and affection on the 

 exhausted as a feeding ground, brushed surviving cub. Abandoning that dan- 

 aside her apprehensions and led him gerous beat, she took him in every 

 and his sister to the cultivated land other direction, and before the sum- 

 where food was abundant. mer had passed made him acquain- 



There they might have roamed and ted with every hill and valley for 



regaled themselves without molestation a radius of five miles about the sett, 



had they kept to the pastures, but un- Once they reached a croft six miles 



