It seemed as if she could not wrench herself away. Once, indeed, she withdrew; but when near the turf-stack she suddenly turned and came back, though the gale raged more furiously than ever. On reaching the pool, she entered the water and stood staring at the islet. The hare observed her with feverish anxiety; he knew that his fate hung by a thread, and scarcely breathed. To the dog the spray-washed rock gave no sign of life whatever, yet it was long before she abandoned this last hope and finally withdrew. A more crestfallen creature than she looked it would be difficult to picture; her gait had lost all its briskness, her limbs relaxed, her ears drooped. Her disappointment overwhelmed her; for she had counted the quarry hers the moment she sighted it, and on the moor had felt absolutely certain of it. The hare watched the retreating form of his enemy till it became a speck and finally disappeared from view. Then he rose, looked round to see that no other enemy was in sight, shook his coat, rolled where the otter had rolled, ensconced himself in the most sheltered spot his inhospitable refuge afforded, and there remained till night. It was pitch dark when he withdrew by way of the rocks he knew so well. CHAPTER VII FROM PILLAR TO POST With its overcast sky and sombre landscape November opened true to its character of the black month. The clouds seemed to have conspired to shut out the sun; only at rare intervals did the patient orb find a rift, but when it did its rays lit up with intense vividness the spot they fell on: Brea farmhouse, a bit of the moor beyond, Sennen Church tower, a patch of ocean, the welter of surf about the Wolf. To all of these, as the shafts of light illuminated them, the eyes of the hare were irresistibly drawn. A week of gloom and gleam was succeeded by a day of startling clearness, with lowland pencilled out distinctly as on a map, a day when the sea came so near that far-off sails and even the unobtrusive isles of Scilly made their presence felt. This phenomenon boded rain, and one morning soon after dawn it fell, gently at first, violently on succeeding days, with a gradual, decided shifting of the wind from the north-west to the north-east, whence at nightfall it blew with wintry coldness. Had it been a dry wind the hare would have enjoyed its keenness, but it brought showers of sleet which wetted him through and through, making his days miserable. At night also these showers greatly inconvenienced him, inasmuch as he had to be continually shaking himself or galloping to and fro on the moorland tracks to keep his coat dry when he should have been at his pasture. He disliked the sleet more than the rain, and the hail more than the sleet, for the stones beat in his face and eyes; worse still, they lashed his ears and made them burn as he sat in the form, when his body shivered with cold from the dampness of the underfur.