The Story of a Hare

by J. C. Tregarthen

BACK ON CARN BREA

On leaving the moor the hare headed as if to return to Tregonebris, but in the dip below the stone-circle he suddenly changed his course and made straight for Brea. He had that instant formed the resolve to forage on the farm there and to harbour afterwards on his native hill. His panic pace, even more the staring eyes turned ever behind him, bespoke his nervous condition; but the farther he went the more composed he grew, and he was almost his normal self by the time he reached his destination.

There he roamed in search of food from pasture to pasture, wondering to see the change that had come over them since his early leveret days. Then the corn and the grass rose high above his head; he recalled how he had stood on his hind legs and looked over the array of ears; now there was not herbage enough to cover his pads. But despite the nakedness of the enclosures he experienced no sense of strangeness: the bushes on the hedges, the gates, the gaps and the linhay in the field beyond the old mine-heaps were the same as ever. He remembered them all, even the hole in the wall of the three-cornered enclosure; and through this, in the small hours, he squeezed his way to the turnip-field that runs like a narrow promontory into the waste. The sight of the turnips gladdened his eyes, for he had gleaned little on the closely browsed grass-land and was very hungry.

He at once pared the rind from one of the roots and began feasting on the succulent pulp. The stars shone bright, the fleecy clouds moved slowly, and the light wind scarcely breathed a sigh on the open waste where some curlews were whistling. The hare took no notice of their calls, but at the startled cry of a plover he at once sprang to the top of the wall, to learn, if he could, what had disturbed it. He scanned the face of the moor carefully without seeing any sign of a marauder, so at length returned to the half-eaten root and consumed it without further interruption.

The night was nearly gone before he withdrew, not following the way he had come, but leaping the wall and crossing the corner of the moor to the partly-upturned field. Here a plough in the furrow caught his eye and caused him to swerve from his path. Yet suspicious as he was of the plough he passed close to a bucket of mushrooms in the Five Acres, where he stood on a mound to gaze at the silent homestead and at Carn Brea before he set off for the hill. Then, as though the fading stars warned him of the need to hurry, he went at so brisk a pace that the noise of his pads on the bridle-track sounded quite distinct in the stillness of the dawn. At the foot of the long slope he quickly laid his maze; he threaded his way up and up past the Pilgrim’s Spring almost to the chantry, and chose a seat amongst the bracken within a few yards of the spot where he was born.

Five months had passed since he sat there, but he felt quite at home. As the light grew, the outlook commanded a well-remembered prospect, albeit the vegetation had greatly changed. His young eyes had beheld it fresh and green; now all was sere and tinted with the colours of decay. Yet the herbage thus blended so wondrously with the russet of his coat that he was not to be distinguished from his surroundings. He seemed a part of the rich mantle which draped the giant shoulders of the hill down to the very verge of the farm, where all was grey and sombre save the bright gold of the sycamore by the dairy window.

Presently the farmer crossed the yard to the shed for the oxen and drove them along the lane to the half-ploughed field, followed by the watchful gulls, which came flying in from the cliffs in such numbers that the long furrow in the wake of the plough was soon white with their forms.

The hare was an interested spectator of all this movement; indeed everything that moved claimed his notice; not a leaf of the sycamore fell but it caught his eye. Stirred by association, old memories, too, came flocking back; once more he was a tiny leveret listening to the whispered monition of his mother, “Sit still, dears, till I come back”; once more he was sitting beside his little sister hearkening to the voices of the night that always died away before the footfall of their mother broke the silence of the dawn and set their hearts aflutter with delight. Then, though he strove to repress all sinister recollections, he rehearsed the visit of the vixen; a glint of the pool on the distant moor called up the horrors of the previous day.

But the most trifling incident diverted his attention; soon he was occupied in watching a red admiral which had settled on a bramble leaf and kept opening and shutting its gorgeous wings, as if for his distraction.

So hour after hour passed in the warm light that bathed the hill and touched with a velvety softness even the old chantry and the granite boulders, till at length the sun sank behind the sea, leaving plain and upland to the mystery of night and the glories of the full moon.