The leveret had not been long in his form before one of these animals crossed the opposite bank, shaking the dew from the wild roses that festooned the creep, and made its way through the barley and the oats to the sett at the foot of the steep slope. Here a colony of badgers lived. The lane in the corn was their highway, and the tree a convenient stretching-post, so that next to the crowing of the cocks, the scratching noise made by powerful claws was the most familiar noise of the grey dawn. Luckily the leveret had no fear of the badgers, no more fear of them indeed than of the long-tailed tit whom he watched coming and going with food for a brood of insatiable nestlings in the near furze-bush. The cries of the young tits, all eager for the food she brought, were at times the only sound that broke the silence of the sequestered spot; there were days when scarcely a breath stirred, when the stalks of the barley were as motionless as the stem of the tree, and the shadow of the frond looked like a stain on the leveret’s coat. He enjoyed the slumbrous peace, and revelled in the noonday heat that shimmered above the array of barley ears and veiled with a pearly haze valley and hills and all the land between. It was a delightful time, which in his innocence he thought would last for ever. He knew nothing of the ways of husbandry, of the harvesting of crops by the dwellers of the homestead, whence by day came shout and song, and where the strange light glowed in the early hours of foraging time. He did not know that man was lord of the earth; as little did he realise that he himself was man’s guest. His own view was quite different. He thought that the clover, the corn, and the pinks grew for him, that fern and heather flourished to afford him cover, that hedge and hill rose above the level merely to furnish him with outlook. He even thought that the sun rose to warm him, that moon and stars shone to light his steps; and he found the world a most delectable place, despite the number of his enemies. A somewhat rude awakening befell him on the thirteenth day of his independence, when the field was invaded by the farm folk. Their coming, or rather their inrush, had nothing to do with the harvesting of the barley, which was yet green; they were drawn thither by an incident of farm life that is attended with as much noise as human beings are capable of making. The hubbub broke out near the house some two furlongs away. Even at that distance the din was disquieting, but it grew louder and louder and caused the leveret more and more perturbation. Whilst he wondered what it all meant, a swarm of bees came flying over the hedge and settled on the tree. In less than a minute three boys, two men, and a woman came tumbling pell-mell over the hedge, shouting “Brownie, Brownie,” and beating frying-pans and milk-pails. The boy who led soon espied the cluster of bees hanging to the branch, and cried, “Here they are, faither, fastened on the old medlar-tree.”