82 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



straight before you as if you saw nothing, and he 

 will presently recover confidence, and actually cross 

 the gateway almost under you. 



This is the secret of observation : stillness, silence, 

 and apparent indifference. In some instinctive way 

 these wild creatures learn to distinguish when one is 

 or is not intent upon them in a spirit of enmity ; and 

 if very near, it is always the eye they watch. So long 

 as you observe them, as it were, from the corner of the 

 eyeball, sideways, or look over their heads at some- 

 thing beyond, it is well. Turn your glance full upon 

 them to get a better view, and they are gone. 



When waiting in a dry ditch with a gun on a 

 warm autumn afternoon for a rabbit to come out, 

 sometimes a bunny will suddenly appear at the mouth 

 of a hole which your knee nearly touches. He stops 

 dead, as if petrified with astonishment, sitting on his 

 haunches. His full dark eye is on you with a gaze of 

 intense curiosity ; his nostrils work as if sniffing ; his 

 whiskers move ; and every now and then he thumps 

 with his hind legs upon the earth with a low dull 

 thud. This is evidently a sign of great alarm, at the 

 noise of which any other rabbit within hearing in- 

 stantly disappears in the 'bury.' Yet there your 

 friend sits and watches you as if spell-bound, so long 

 as you have the patience neither to move hand or foot 



