220 STUBBS THE BADGER 
The grass was all but hidden under a blue blur of 
scabious, and the cobwebs in the hedges were 
elaborately studded with dew-drops. In some places 
the corn was already ripening, and the sparrows 
harvested there before the farmer was astir. A 
kestrel patrolled the fields for breakfast, and a 
hare lilted back to her form. Lazy pigeons flapped 
over the barley fields, and the rabbits kicked up 
their scuts and bolted into the hedges as the badger 
trudged past. 
As he climbed the long slopes at the back of 
Knockdane, the early beams of the August sunrise 
shot over the hill. A cock-pheasant, gobbling 
blackberries, ran away at his approach, and boomed, 
crowing, over the hedge. Something must indeed 
be amiss that the badger was astir after sunrise. 
Stubbs had never seen the sun so high in all his 
life, and to his eyes the whole world was bathed 
in perplexing glare green, blue, and golden. He 
climbed painfully over the boundary wall and into 
the grateful shadows of the wood, where the mists, 
as though entangled in the tree-trunks, were long 
in lifting. 
He turned down the well-known track, and 
presently, like the gates of a city of refuge, the 
mouth of the ' earth ' opened before him. Not a 
leaf stirred, but scent lay long on the warm air, 
