April 24, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER 
TALES OF THE UNTAMED 
DRAMAS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD. 
Adapted from the French of Louis Pergaud by Douglas English. 
I.-ROUSSARD. 
TWILIGHT bad called to Roussard, Roussard the 
Brown Jack Hare. He snuffed the drowsy evening 
scents, the alsikes, the clovers. He stretched him- 
self within his form; backwards from fixed fore- 
paws until his scut broke through the flimsy roof- 
ing; forwards from fixed hind-paws, until his ears and head 
stood clear. 
Daylong he had been drowsing, for the most time with 
opened eyes as though he feared his sentinel ears might sleep; 
with rounded, terror-haunted eyes that mirrored every rustle; 
with drooping, hollowed shells of ears that twitched at every 
twig-snap. 
The glimmering, whispering undergrowth was back- 
ground to his dreams. Never a lilting course by night, but 
brought its panic-flight with it ; never a day of drowsing ease, 
but brought night's panic back in dreams. 
The stiffened forward stretch relaxed. Roussard, with 
bogging paws, sat up to listen, swivelling his ebon-pointed ears 
to north and east and south to west. 
Roussard dropt back to wash his face, to comb his 
whiskers, clean his feet. Ilis furry hands danced past his 
moistened lips, and fluttered down his cheeks, and fanned his 
muzzle. 
He pulled his ears down to his mouth and preened their 
■oft grey linings. He nibbled at his body-fur till every hair 
gleamed like a strand of silk. He glossed the pointing bristles 
of his whiskers; he furbished up his pads. 
Then, with a little shake, he stretched himself. Like 
warrior armed, like traveller girt, Roussard, Jack Hare of 
Valrimond, was ready for the night. 
Spring-heeled he leapt, his long ears forward tilted, his 
white scut drooped, his back a rounded curve. 
He landed five yards eastward of his thicket. He claimed 
that thicket wholly, though Valrimond lies half a league away. 
Moon after moon he stablished it, as his inviolable domain. 
The woodland hares, though curious at the first, had, instinct- 
taught, allowed him full pos.session — had left him Lord and 
Master of the Combe. 
One hare, one form, one quarter of the wood — such was 
bare-law. 
Yet chance had given the combe to him, chance and the 
fortune of the hunt. A hunt by two wire-sinewed hounds, 
double on double, swerve on swerve, and, at the end, when 
breath had almost left him, a lucky ccuch between two plough- 
turned ridges, with ears drooped back, and fur wind- 
gmoothed. 
A night and day he couched — like a grey stone; and, 
when the gloaming called, set course for home, and passed the 
combe, and found the combe untenanted. 
lie owed his life to that. The owner of the combe had 
crossed his line — and fallen to the dogs. 
So Rou.-isard gained bis kingdom, a kingdom thiclceted 
with bramble cover, a windless kingdom, flanked by clover 
fields. 
Lilting on feather-balanced feet, as though he feared (he 
■ound of them, Roussard danced moth-like to the gap. 
A south wind crept to meet him, with ki.sses for the 
parched June leaves, with sighing, rustling wbis])er from the 
clover. 
He slipped witliout and paused. This way and that he 
snuffed the air, this way and that swung anxious ears to hii't 
the tangled rhythm of Li)e night. The twilight deepened in a 
velvet silence. The south wind sighed itself away. Within 
the supple rampaila of the dusk, tliere was no susuect sound, 
no .suspect scent. 
Roussard let droop his silky cars, and kicked, and bucked, 
and pranced, for joy of living. 
His play-time, feediug-time bad come. 
He nibbled here and there, a clover-head, a dandelion; 
but, for the most lime, played. 
From clump to clump he bounded like a colt; he leapt at 
his own dusky leaping shadow; he ran the hedgrows end to 
end; even towards the village street to brave its human 
turmoil. 
But he was quickly back again, back to the dewy clover- 
fields, the honoy-sweetened clover-fields. 
For here he had been wont to meet his kin. Jack Hares 
as crazy as himself, who nosed his nose, and dared bim to 
ruu races. 
Yet for two moons be had not seen a hare. 
A smaller race had quartered on the slope, a dark-furred, 
sulky-tempered race, a pushing, jostling, upstart race, who 
met his greetings with a scowl, who eyed his passing wickedly, 
gibbering in uncouth tongue, and crinkling muzzles. 
Roussard was half afraid of them, short-eared, squat- 
bodied, gnomish things who burrowed under earth. 
He loathed their presence, yet he failed to liuk it with 
the absence of bis kin. 
Roussard was very perfect knigbt; he scorned a quarrel 
with these dwarfs, whose strength and swiftness were not half 
his own. 
So this night, as he sped afield, he took small heed of 
countless scuttling shapes, which leapt, and stamped, and 
grunted at his coming. 
A waning moon climbed slowly up the sky, dulling the 
rainbow sparkle of the star-shine, revealing earth in sbimmery 
mist of grey. 
Roussard stared round-eyed at the moon, half-fearful, 
half-perplexed. 
Roussard sat on a mole-hill. 
Beneath bim was a dip of ground. 
Roussard's eyes left the moon, and travelling sidelong up 
the slope, lit on the rubble heap. 
Dark shadows jerked about it, and, as the moon climbed 
higher, shaped themselves. 
It was a rabbit parliament. 
Some squatted, some sat up. They heaved and thronged 
and jostled one ancther. Some shrugged their shoulders, 
some upreared their scuts, some pricked their ears, some 
lowered them, as though to voice their ayes and noes, and 
sballs and wou'ts by gesture. 
The moonshine lit them doubtfully — a reel and rout of 
glistening tails and leaping, swaying bodies. 
Stub, crinkly, whiskered muzzles twitched grimacing; 
white chisel-teeth gleamed threatening through cleft lips; 
short fore-paws drummed on testy, heaving waistcoats; now 
and again a hind-paw struck the ground with menacing thud, 
with vicious stamp, which double-scored its argument. 
To Roussard, solitary, like all his kind, such concourse, 
such palaver, was prodigious. 
He stared at it with glassy eye, with rounded frigid 
vacant eye, with eye behind whose soullessness there seemed to 
lurk presentiment of ill. 
Till the sun rose he stared at it; then, .is they scattered, 
be, too, made for home. 
He chose the wind he used the most, the wind which 
crosi?ed the stubble to the dyke, and tunnelled to the hayfield, 
and skirted the west side of this, and pierced the hedge clos« 
to the gate, and so into the lucerne field, and, downwards, to 
the combe. 
He quickly reached (he tunnel througli the dyke, and 
reaching it, stopped dead. Two rabbits barred bis bolt-hole. 
Soured-faced they stared at him, grating their teeth, flutter- 
ing their puckered muzzles. 
Tiiey gave v/ay sulkily, one either side. 
Roussard pres.'-ed on, to thread the run that crept along 
the hedge. The gap was balf-Vifay down its length, but 
Roussard whisked about before he reached it. From near the 
gate whiffed mu.stiness — more rabbits, many rabbits. At least 
these had not sighted him, and there was yet another bolt- 
bole lower. 
He made a circling cast afield and drew towards it 
cautiously. Two rabbits watched its entrance. 
Roussard retraced his stops, far back this time, towards 
the dyke, and found the squatting sentinels still on guard. 
Then,' eastward, by a half-forgotten trod, which swerved 
about in widened arc, and reached the comhe on its south side. 
This was untramelled highway, with one :-.mout only 
brealnng it, a tunnel through the thorn hedge flecked with fur. 
Roussard swept down it like the wind, with head pressed 
back and flattened ears, and white scut tilted forward. And 
rabbits started every side, and glowered, and stamped swift 
signals as he passed. 
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