Ii 4 FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBIT 
November gales, which slashed the sleet across the 
woods. Once or twice the men came to shoot in 
Knockdane, but the White Rabbit was safe enough, 
for she never made a ' form,' but always lay under- 
ground. In fact, there was little enough covert in 
that part of Knockdane in the winter, and in 
January, when the foxes were ravenous, the woods 
were quite bare. However, the White Rabbit 
passed unscathed through that time of peril ; even 
the traps, which doubly decimated her companions, 
spared her. Nature, who had put a mark upon 
her which set her apart from her fellows, had in 
compensation gifted her with keener wits and 
judgment. As everybody knows, a rabbit track 
runs hop-dot down the hedgerow like a rosary of 
beads, and Paddy Magragh set his snares cunningly 
in the beads, which are the little patches from 
which the rabbits hop over the tussocks ; but the 
White Doe went safely to and fro, merely skipping 
aside if the wicked loop struck her nose. Perhaps, 
again, it was her colour which saved her here, for 
many a bunny blundered into the noose when his 
fellows chased him in sport or anger ; but the brown 
rabbits ignored the White Doe, and she hopped 
leisurely between her hole and the meadow unharmed. 
Nevertheless, towards the end of the winter, she, 
with the rest of the rabbit kind, suffered grievously 
