The footfall of the miller and the noise he made in pulling the faggots out of the furze-rick caused the polecat little disquietude; but the moment Zekiah began whistling “Pop goes the Weasel,” he leapt to the sward and bounded after his mother, already in full retreat with the rest of the litter, towards a deserted quarry where she had decided to pass the rest of the day. CHAPTER V A DELUSIVE REFUGE The night after that terrible chase the hare made his way back to the farm; but there he met only fresh troubles. First he was driven from Johanna’s Garden by a man cutting the hedge, and compelled to slink away in a blaze of sunshine, which was torture to him; next, when sitting in the clover he was pestered by a yearling, that kept rubbing him with her nose. Despite the buffeting he gave her, she annoyed him so much that in the end he had no choice but to get up and steal away to the cabbage-pile. A week later he was driven from this retreat by old Betty, who came and cut the very cabbage that sheltered him. Thereupon he returned to the seat on the hedge, and continued to use it until one morning he found a weasel curled up there. Then he forsook it for good. That night, when considering where he should pass the coming day, his thoughts, as always in time of worry, turned to the hill, and at the approach of dawn, instead of heading for the farm, he set his face for Chapel Carn Brea. He was quite elated at the prospect of returning to the familiar upland; he even made up his mind where to sit; yet all came to nothing, for when he was a mile on the way another retreat won his favour and turned him from his purpose. As he skirted the large pool on the Land’s End moor his ever alert eyes fell on the tiny island in its midst; immediately there flashed on his mind an idea of the immunity from molestation such a retreat would afford. There, with the water around him, he felt that he would be safer than anywhere else; that neither fox nor cat, polecat nor weasel, would disturb him, nor man intrude; in short, that the islet offered the sanctuary he had often longed for and hitherto sought in vain. But there was one disadvantage, and a most serious one—the apparent impossibility of reaching the island without swimming. He knew from his experience at the mill-pool that no amount of shaking could dry a wet coat sufficiently to make sitting in it endurable for a whole day; and because of this he was on the point of abandoning the project and continuing his way, when, on second thoughts, prompted by the low state of the water, he decided to try whether he could reach the island by wading.