'Well?'
'Call 'em off! Leave the last bit till morning. Let 'em creep away in the dark and keep living a bit longer!'
'What nonsense!'
'Call 'em off, Jack! You can. You'm maister!'
'No.'
She sobbed. 'I be going, then.'
'No. You're to stay. You'll have to be cured of this damned silliness, and learn to be sensible.'
While she struggled to wrench herself free, two rabbits bolted, and hell broke loose. One would not have thought that the great calm evening under its stooping sky, the peaceful, omniscient trees, the grave, contented colours, could have tolerated such hideousness. The women and children shrieked with the best, and Hazel stood alone—the single representative, in a callous world, of God. Or was the world His representative, and she something alien, a dissentient voice to be silenced?
Such scenes, infinitely multiplied, bring that question to one's mind.
A rabbit had dashed across the field close to them, and Reddin, relaxing his grip of her, had slashed at it with his stick. The look of its eye, white and staring, as it fled past her with insensate speed, came back to her now, and its convulsive roll over and recovery under the blow; and then the next blow—She had fled from the place.