10 ONE WINTER'S NIGHT. 
Then was commotion. ‘The ground was 
alive with running rabbits ; a bigger red form 
streaked across the clearing; there was a 
pathetic, child-like squeal on the frozen silence, 
a thudding of paws, and—nothing. 
The glade was empty. Not a living thing 
showed upon it. But the old rabbit knew 
that he had just seen a young rabbit snapped 
up by a fox, and his patience had not been 
wasted. 
An hour later, last of all to leave the 
burrows, the old buck-rabbit stole cautiously 
forth into the pale, cold moonlight. He took 
a few quick hops and sat up. You could 
see his cleft nose ‘working,’ his bulging eyes 
ashine, his long ears twisting this way and 
that. 
Then he took another few hops, and again 
sat up, dropped again, and disappeared into 
the shadows under the leafless nut-bushes. 
And once there, he travelled straight away, 
for he was going to find food. He had to, 
or starve. 
Silent as a little brown fairy mannikin, he 
hopped along the still woodland aisles, fairly 
fast, but always careful. Here he would stop 
to analyse the air; there he skirted a bush; 
a dozen times he paused to sniff a twig. 
Suddenly he spun about in his tracks and 
