A LANE winds steeply through Knockdane Wood;|H 
and at the top of the hill where the trees grow ^ 
sparsely, there is a gate leading to a furze-grown 
field. The grass is cropped short and thick by 
generations of sheep and rabbits ; and the slopes 
are dotted with gorse bushes which they have 
nibbled into all kinds of fantastic shapes. Between 
the wood and the field the gorse forms a prickly 
barrier six feet high, but it tapers off to mere pin- 
cushions of eighteen inches in the open. The first 
time that White-Lamb saw the bushes, he stubbed 
his nose into them, and then cried out because the 
thorns pricked. White-Lamb had only lived two 
days of his allotted span, and had not yet learned 
that gorse is prickly. 
There were a score of sheep in the field, and 
