The Story of a Hare

by J. C. Tregarthen

The foxes checked themselves on the very verge and stood gazing at the snow marked by the cleanly-cut hole made by the hare as he fell. “Done after all,” was the meaning of the expression on Grey Fox’s mask. But he was not to be thus deprived of his prey if search could avail, and to this end he and the vixen made their way down to the base of the quarry and were lost to sight in the drift as they worked towards the spot where they expected to find the hare lying dead.

Far from being dead, however, he was not even disabled; indeed he was none the worse for his dive, the snow having completely broken his fall. On feeling the ground beneath his pads he moved forward, and had advanced some twelve yards when he found himself confronted by the huge heap of loose rock which the quarrymen had piled there. It barred his way, threatening to prevent his escape, until presently he found a small opening, and through it squeezed to a narrow tunnel-like passage which led to a chamber littered with the remains of rabbits, mice, eels, and frogs. It was a polecat’s den—the den, indeed, of the polecat that had chased him, the den where she and her kittens had slept after the pursuit. He crossed the foul lair and tried to pass through the narrow space between two rocks on the farther side. This looked like courting destruction, for he ran the risk of being jammed and unable to extricate himself; but he could hear the foxes behind him; he must go that way or perish. With a struggle he forced his head and shoulders through; then he was fixed, he could not clear his hindquarters, tug and strain as he might. As he stopped to recover his breath, he caught the patter of his pursuers’ pads: they were approaching the den: in a few seconds Grey Fox’s jaws would close on him and the rocks ring with his death squeal. Frantic with fear, maddened by dread of his fate, he made a frenzied effort and just managed to pull his long hind legs through before Grey Fox could seize them.

Yet to that very opening which had all but proved his destruction, he was now to owe his life. For Grey Fox, desperately anxious to reach him, forced his great head through the hole with the hope of seizing him, and got it so firmly wedged that some minutes elapsed before he succeeded in withdrawing it. By that time the hare was once more well on his way up the hill. He had passed over the brow before the foxes discovered the line of his retreat. But it was soon evident, from their half-hearted manner, that they were on the point of abandoning the pursuit, which they did a bow-shot beyond the lighted cottage.

What a change had come over them! They hardly looked the same creatures as when, alive in every fibre, they had stood on the Beacon, the embodiment of eagerness and energy. Now their heads drooped, their brushes that had waved like feathers, dragged and seemed to weigh them down. They looked dispirited, as indeed they were, and humbled too: the grass-feeder had proved more than a match for both of them, though, as they had seen, he was hampered by large balls of snow that clung to his fur. They went back the way they had come, the vixen leading, Grey Fox hopping on three legs. Twice he stopped to scratch his aching jaws, and at the bend by the quarry he disappeared from view.

The hunt was over, but even when satisfied of that the hare still held on. He was harassed now by a fresh fear, the fear of being tracked. This possessed him so strongly, that weary as he was, he wandered in and out the patches of scattered furze, confusing his trail so as to baffle any enemy who should try to trace him, and not until the long night was giving way to dawn did he settle in his form, which he sought in the old spot on the bank of the mill-pool.

That day, whilst the Squire was abroad after woodcock, he came on the triple trail above the quarry, and recognising the track of the hare, was at once filled with desire to see the end of the story told on the snow. His excitement, as he stood on the lip of the quarry, looking at the shaft-like hole, astonished his henchman: the feeling he displayed when he discovered the track of the hare by the cottage door was altogether beyond the man’s comprehension.

“Ah, that shows how sorely the poor thing was pressed. Had the door been open, she would have gone in and taken her chance.”

At every stride he expected to come on the end of the tragic chase, and kept looking ahead for the remains that would mark the last scene. All the greater, then, was his delight to find that the foxes had withdrawn from the chase, and greater too his determination to try and get a view of the animal whose survival in that vermin-haunted district seemed little short of miraculous. For three hours he followed the trail, pondering as he went over the animal’s hairbreadth escapes as his imagination called them up and, in his anxiety to come on the hare before dusk, almost losing his temper at the delays the creature’s ruses caused him. “Give it up, Squire,” said his man at last; “you’ll never come up with her, take and give it up.”

“Not whilst there’s light to see by,” was the laconic reply. It was nearly four o’clock when they came to the mill-pool. Even then they searched and searched in vain, for as the hare had landed from his last spring the snow fell from the tuft and concealed him. “She’s here, I know she’s here,” said the Squire in despair. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the hare bounded from his feet and crossed the pond.

“Shoot, shoot,” shouted the man; “darn ’ee, shoot.” Instead of raising his gun, the Squire raised his hand and kept it at the salute till the creature passed from sight. It was his way of paying homage to an animal hero.