The rabbit stuck one of its ears straight up.
"Little boy, I rejoice at your good fortune. While your poor leg was still crooked, and the iron clanked upon it, and you were as thin and pale as you are now brown and stout, you never neglected me. I always felt that you understood me and mine better than those great careless men who come with the bread and the cabbage-leaves, but with never a word of greeting. Even now, when the ground is white and cold, you do not forget us. We feel that you are one of us. It is not given to all of the Menial People to speak as plainly as I do, but you have my earnest assurance that all have the same feeling of affection toward you."
While the rabbit was speaking, Pwit-Pwit, having satisfied his hunger, hopped up beside him, and told him of the disgraceful conduct of the bears and the racoons.
"I could have told you," answered the rabbit, "that the first snow would deprive you of all companionship on the part of those people. It was their custom before being taken into captivity to sleep steadily through all the freezing weather. My people understood it well, for then we had only the wildcats, the wolves and the foxes to fear."
"But how could they live so long without eating?" demanded Pwit-Pwit. "When the weather is cold, my appetite is sharper than ever."
"They lived upon their fat," answered the old gray rabbit. "All the time the leaves were falling the bears ate grapes and berries in the forest, until they were so fat they could hardly walk. I remember we were never afraid of them then, they were so slow and clumsy. It was the same with the racoons. All night they would steal along the margin of the river, gorging themselves with clams, fish and young ducks, and sometimes would go into the fields for the juicy, green corn. So, when the first snow came, they, too, were almost too fat to walk.
"Then," continued the old gray rabbit, "the bears would crawl into the farthest corner of their caves, while the racoons would curl up into furry rings at the ends of their burrows, and there they would sleep soundly until the warm sun should again melt the snow. All these things I know well, for it is during the first warm days of spring that the rabbits are ever on the alert because of the gaunt figures of the half-starved bears, awakened by their hunger, which then prowl over the land."