He was in the highest of spirits; the nearer he came to the field the more determined he was to show fight to the rabbits should they combine to drive him from it. The thought never entered his head that any other creatures would intervene between him and his feast, much less that before he could reach the feeding-ground he would be turned into a terror-stricken fugitive; yet so it proved. On, on he sped until he reached the pasture adjoining the clover; he was within a stone’s throw of the gate when he heard the patter of feet on the other side of the hedge; his curiosity was aroused, and he stood still to see the creatures pass the gap a dozen yards to his rear. He expected to view a troop of rats, of which he had met many in the standing corn; to his horror it proved to be a family of polecats, moving so slowly in single file that, though there were only six in all, he thought the procession would never come to an end. All peered through the gap; the last actually stopped and scrutinised the leveret, but concluding that he was one of the many stones that littered the ground, galloped off after the others. It was a narrow escape, for had the leveret raised head or ears he must have been recognised and have drawn the bloodthirsty crew upon him. The sight of the polecats had so frightened him that he was incapable of movement; it was some minutes before he had sufficiently recovered to continue on his way. Near the gate he stopped and looked back, and once more after entering the field, but without seeing a sign of the enemy. Then he cast his eyes vaguely over the field, the goal of his longing. Not a rabbit was to be seen; the patch of uncut clover looked most tempting. Did he hasten to nibble the succulent leaves? Not at all: he never went near them; he moved away, urged by the impulse to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the polecats, for he felt sure they would follow his trail. All at once he broke into a panic-stricken flight, and kept it up as far as the barley-field, which had been cut in his absence. On the hedge by the tit’s deserted nest he stood and listened with ears erect. He expected to hear the whimpering chorus that he had once heard in the valley below, the cry that would confirm his fears. But there was no sound, not even a slight rustling of the medlar leaves. The silence, however, brought him no comfort. It could not dispel the dread which kept him wandering aimlessly about the oatfield like a thing awaiting its doom; so that he must have wasted half an hour before leaving by the gate at the lower corner and galloping across the long meadow where some bullocks glared at him as he sped past. In the small enclosure beyond he stopped to nibble one of the turnips growing there, but so nervous was he that the pigeon drinking at the woodland pool does not raise its head more often than he. His eyes are directed to the spot on the hedge where he had passed; for he is