STUBBS THE BADGER 
189 
deeper. Then, without any warning, a badger, 
larger than the last, scurried across the pit so quickly 
that Magragh's old eyes had barely caught sight 
of him before he vanished in the shadows. 
' A pair o' thim,' said the old man, hobbling 
homewards. 
A week later he waited there again ; waited 
until the woodcock had settled down to feed, and 
the light was almost gone, leaving the pit so dark 
that his eyes saw nothing when his ears caught 
the rustle of a single hunter turning up the hill 
from the ' earth.' 
' There 's cubs wid'in/ opined Paddy Magragh. 
Tunnelled ten yards into the hillside, up a narrow 
gallery to the right, and then down another, dug 
at right angles to avoid a rock proof against even 
a badger's claws, was the nursery ; and here the 
cubs were born at the end of March. If Mother 
Badger had been wary before, she now increased 
her caution to an unheard-of degree. Even the 
distant shuffle of her mate's footsteps, as he went 
out to feed, was sufficient to rouse her to a rumbling 
growl. She herself never stirred outside the ' earth ' 
until after midnight, and, even then, the ' wick- 
wick ' of a wakeful throstle set her heart thudding. 
It was the middle of April before Mother Badger 
