Poaching Cats. 125 



its haunts in yonder coppice, and is now making its 

 way home. It is so intent that it is within some thirty 

 yards of us, or it may be even less, before it observes 

 us— sharp as its eyes are; then, with a sudden sur- 

 prised look that might well bespeak a troubled con- 

 science, it turns and bolts and leaps over a hedge and 

 disappears, making the dew sparkle as it goes. The 

 expression of that cat going homewards in the dawn 

 — tail down, hind quarters low, and shoulders raised 

 — suggests the idea that but for man's constant pre- 

 sence and control, all would at once relapse into 

 wildness. 



The late laureate caught this effect, as he had 

 caught so many others in nature, in the first stanza of 

 his song, " The Owl " : — 



" When cats run home and light is come, 

 And dew is cold upon the ground, 

 And the far-off stream is dumb, 

 And the whirring sail goes round, 

 Alone, and warming his five wits, 

 The white-owl in the belfry sits." 



Look, as we walk home through the coppice, we 

 come on tuft after tuft of rabbits' down, and might 

 fancy at first that here was the scene of the weasel's 

 depredations. Not at all. There are burrows in that 

 hedgerow, and here one of the rabbit does has plucked 

 the down from her breast for the lining of the burrow 

 for her young ones ; and in the twilight of morning 

 in which she deemed it most safe and advisable to 

 perform this maternal self-denudation, was not so 

 careful as she might have been to remove all traces of 

 her loving labour and near abode. Master Weasel 

 may make some use of the information if he has 

 noticed this. 



