As Marjorie approached, the rabbits took flight, and their white tails could be seen disappearing into their burrows, a certain sign that no one had been by before her; and in a few minutes she was safely ensconced in a deep hollow surrounded by brambles, after she had taken the precaution to lay a few fern leaves in the bottom of a little basket, and rapidly pick a few weeds to give colour to her presence there. The time glided on, and all was so still that a stone-chat came and sat upon a twig close at hand, watching her curiously. Then the rabbits stole out one by one from their burrows, and began to race here and there, indulging in playful bounds as if under the impression that it was evening; but though Marjorie strained her ears to listen, there was no sound of approaching steps, and at last she sat there with her brow full of lines, and her eyes staring angrily from beneath her contracted brows. "He will not come to-day," she muttered. "What shall I do?" "Oh!" she cried, in a harsh whisper, after a long pause, as she crushed together the nearest tuft of leaves, "I could kill her." She winced slightly, and then glanced contemptuously at her glove, which was torn, and in three places her white palm was pierced, scratched and bleeding, for she had grasped a twig or two of bramble. The blood on her hand seemed to have a peculiar fascination for her, and she sat there with her eyes half-shut, watching the long red lines made by snatching her hand away, and at the two tiny beads, which gradually increased till she touched them in turn with the tip of her glove, and then carelessly wiped them away. "`He cometh not,'" she said to herself, with a curious laugh. _Rap_! And then, from different parts of the hollow, came the same sharp, clear sound, as rabbit after rabbit struck the ground with its foot, giving the alarm and sending all within hearing scuttling into their holes. Marjorie had been long enough in the country to know the meaning of that noise, and, with her eyes now wide and wild-looking, she listened for the step which had startled the little animals--one plain to them before it grew clear to her. No step. Not a sound, and her face was a study, could it have been seen, in its intense eagerness for what seemed, in the silence, minutes, while she retained her breath. "Hah!" One long, weary exclamation, and a bitter look of disappointment crossed her eager face. The next moment it was strained again, and her eyes flashed like those of some wild animal whose life depends upon the acuteness of its perceptions. There was a faint rustle. Then silence. Then a faintly-heard scratching noise, as of a thorn passing over a garment. "He's coming," thought Marjorie, "coming, and this way;" and she leaned forward in time to see a figure, bent down so low that it seemed to be going on all fours, dart silently from behind one clump of brambles away to her left, and glide into the shelter of another.