106 FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBIT 
presence lingered even when his footsteps had 
passed into the distance. A broody blackbird 
' chinked ' anxiously, and a pigeon wheeled aside 
with a ' swoof.' A few inches from where the little 
rabbit lay gaped a bolt-hole of the hedge burrow, 
and her instinct bade her creep within into the cool, 
comfortable darkness. 
This is how the White Rabbit entered upon her 
life in the woods, orphaned, with nothing to guide 
her but the ancestral code which every rabbit knows. 
However, she had already learned three things, and 
important ones too that hawks are dangerous, 
stoats still more so, and men are to be dreaded 
most of all. 
Were I to relate all the vicissitudes which befell 
the White Rabbit during the following days, I 
should be accused of recounting miracles ; for 
perhaps under the circumstances not one rabbit in 
ten would have survived. The ditch was full of 
enemies, for hedges are the Fur Folk's highways 
from field to field, and foxes, cats, and stoats 
patrolled it from hour to hour. The next evening 
the White Rabbit worked along to the demesne 
wall, under which a little drain ran, and crept into 
the wood. If there was vastness and mystery 
in the fields, how much more under the trees ? 
