It is strange how quickly the fertile soil awakens from such a lethargy of long, dark years. From where I sit, high upon the sunny slope, I can see nothing but greenery. All that remains of the dense growth of hazel, that covered this part of the wood, is gathered into great square piles, looking like windowless houses set here and there on the sunny declivity. Primroses shine everywhere; truly not in the abundance of April, but still there is no yard of ground without their sulphur sheen. Red deadnettle makes a rosy flush in the grass at my feet. There is ground-ivy round the base of each hazel-stole, with its pale violet flowers, so minute, yet making such a brave show by sheer strength of numbers. And hovering everywhere over this still mere of sunshine, with its sunken treasure of blossom, are butterflies—great sulphur-yellow butterflies—flapping idly along, little tortoiseshells and peacocks that have laid up through the winter, and one gorgeous red-admiral, also a hibernator, veering about in the sunshine with outspread, motionless wings. To this secret nook of woodland I came but an hour ago, yet in that one hour of still March sunshine, I have seen and heard more things than could be chronicled, perhaps, in a day’s hard driving of the swiftest pen. To set down only the things that dwell foremost in the memory is not easy. I had been here only a few minutes when a rabbit came racing across the clearing, dodging in and out of the hazel-stoles in tremendous hurry and fear. On seeing me, he turned off at a sharp angle, then scurried away into the wood. A full five minutes after came a stealthy rustling from the same direction, and a ruddy-furred stoat drew into view, his snake-like head alternately poised high in the sunshine and lowered amidst the grass, as he carefully picked up the rabbit’s trail. He was going at only a tithe of the rabbit’s pace, but going without an instant’s hesitation. Where the rabbit had turned off at seeing me, the stoat also veered sharply round. He went straight for the wood, entering it, as far as I could judge, at exactly the same spot. So he would go on, I knew, until at last his blood-thirsty cunning and pertinacity had outworn the rabbit’s speed.