Meanwhile the leveret, his task well done, was on the point of leaving the downs. He was perhaps a score yards from the gate when the cry he had been so long expecting fell on his ears and rendered him all but helpless. Some hares would have lain down and awaited their fate; others would have squealed and hastened it; but the leveret’s courage was high, and, stifling the cry which sought for utterance, he battled as best he could against the paralysing weakness that assailed him, and dragged himself yard by yard towards the gate. Suddenly the cry ceased: the polecats had come on the maze, and in silence devoted themselves to the business of unravelling it. With the cessation of the blood-curdling chorus the leveret’s power gradually returned; he drew farther and farther away, seemingly all uncertain as to his goal. At one moment he headed for the form on the hedge; at another for the mound where he had sat once or twice when the wind was northerly; but in the end he set his face for the form by the pool, and to this direction he kept. The polecats, maddened by the delay, had been displaying a feverish energy in their attempt to discover the true line. Each worked independently of the other, and not a kitten looked to the mother for guidance. Theirs was indeed a difficult task: no pack of harriers would have accomplished it without aid of man; yet the wildlings, with a persistence that would not be denied, after two hours’ search succeeded in recovering the line by which the leveret had left the field. Strangely enough the discovery was made by the smallest of the litter, who, after raising the cry of “found,” sat on his haunches and gazed about him, as if he expected to view the game. He continued to sit even after his mother had taken up the trail, but presently fell into his place at the end of the long file and joined in the full-tongued chorus. Increased speed now marked the pursuit. The pack was running for blood, and running as they knew against time, for night was yielding to the grey dawn. Already the cocks were crowing, and soon a farm boy was heard calling the cows. At other times the polecats would have stopped, perhaps slunk away to cover; now they gave no heed, no more indeed than to the ruddy sky that told of the coming sun. True that, save for the occasional cry of a kitten, they had ceased their whimperings; otherwise they behaved as if it were the dead of night, going from corner to corner of even the biggest fields, and when at last they came to the mill-lane, following it with a daring that wild creatures rarely display.