he fell asleep curled up in the innermost recess of his earth. Meanwhile the hare, who had resolved to abandon the hill for a while, sat thinking over the question of a new seat. His mind once more ran over all the old forms, but in the end rejected every one of them for the untried retreat in the cliffs to which he had been on the point of going before. That night he spent on the moorland, where—a most unusual thing—he did not encounter a single trail or hear a disturbing cry, though after his gallops he always stopped to listen. He looked the picture of attention, standing on knoll or barrow with his great ears raised to their full height to catch the voices of the wild. A few seconds only did he bestow on this duty; he was in too high spirits to give more. His exuberant energies called for vigorous exercise, and when he was not spinning along or hearkening, he skipped and frisked about like a frolicsome kid. He travelled miles and miles, “going all ways,” so that midnight had long passed when he set foot on the strip of waste overlooking the sea. There he nibbled the herbage and ate all the blackberries he could find, shrivelled though they were. Rearing on his hind legs he stripped every bramble patch before crossing to the cliffs, where he dropped from terrace to terrace till he came to the spot at which he intended to sit. But then a steep slope that still more took his fancy opened to his view. Though eager to reach it, he paused at the edge of the chasm that separated him from it; the turmoil of the water in the gully and the raging of the surge in the great cave to which the gully led disconcerted and checked him. After a moment’s hesitation, however, he leapt the opening, gained the slope, and sat on a cushion of thrift overlapping the lip of the under-cliff. Within the ambit of his wanderings he could not have selected a more secluded spot. Man had never set foot there; save for the old fisherman who rested on his oars to gaze at the primroses, sea-pinks, and foxgloves that in their season decked this hanging garden, no human eye had seen its beauty. Even now the solitary furze-bush amongst the naked rods of the foxgloves was gay with blossom, for the slope fronted south and caught the sun. Sitting there the hare observed every living thing within his ken. He watched the gannets that sent the spray flying as they dived into a school of pilchards; he was interested in the cormorants that stood on the rock below and dried their outstretched wings; even the little companies of mullet did not escape him, when they came scurrying past the point and coasted round the tiny bay; and by such sights his attention was drawn, his curiosity excited, as he enjoyed the warmth of the sun that brightened the austerity of the cliff and sparkled on the wintry sea.