WAYS OF THE HUNTED 255 



even near him. The quickest keeper could scarcely have 

 shot the stoat in time. No Dumas musketeer could have 

 more coolly and courageously thought out and carried out 

 his ways of escape than that buck stoat ; and the behaviour 

 is normal to the species. It is also characteristic that they 

 dislike skulking or lying low to escape notice as do the 

 timid creatures, such as rabbits and hares. This reluctance 

 may lead to their undoing. If you frighten a weasel into 

 any cover, such as a heap of 

 faggots, you may know for 

 certain that he will not stay 

 there long. As surely as a 

 rabbit which took sanctuary 

 would stay in it, so surely 

 would a weasel leave it at the 

 first opportunity. You have 

 only to sit still and watch. 



The strangest and most 

 thrilling feat that the writer 

 ever saw was the escape of a 

 hunted weasel. It appeared 

 from a grating close by the 



wall of a beautiful sixteenth-century house of red brick. 

 The age and material of the building are pertinent to 

 the issue of the story. The animal had come forward very 

 little way when his retreat was cut off by a party issuing 

 from a door just by the grating. They were armed with 

 nothing more alarming than tennis balls and tennis racquets, 

 but these were weapons enough. The weasel at once made 

 for the wall of the house where it jutted out on the side 

 remote from the door. He ran up a climbing rose-tree, but 

 on reaching the top, where he stayed a moment, he found 

 himself still within reach of the racquets. The only way of 

 * s 



WEASEL 



