Lives of the Fur Folk

by Maud D. Haviland

HOW FLUFF-BUTTON CRIED QUITS

A lane winds steeply through Knockdane Wood; and at the top of the hill where the trees grow sparsely, there is a gate leading to a furze-grown field. The grass is cropped short and thick by generations of sheep and rabbits; and the slopes are dotted with gorse bushes which they have nibbled into all kinds of fantastic shapes. Between the wood and the field the gorse forms a prickly barrier six feet high, but it tapers off to mere pin-cushions of eighteen inches in the open. The first time that White-Lamb saw the bushes, he stubbed his nose into them, and then cried out because the thorns pricked. White-Lamb had only lived two days of his allotted span, and had not yet learned that gorse is prickly.

There were a score of sheep in the field, and each of them had her white lamb (or maybe two) running beside her; but only one White-Lamb comes into this story, because he was the only one who had anything to do with the course of events in Knockdane Wood, and even his influence was only indirect through Fluff-Button the Rabbit. Fluff-Button was a great hero in Knockdane, as any of the Fur Folk can tell you; but he would never have grown up at all if it had not been for White-Lamb, as this story will relate.

In the year of which I write, March and April changed places; for although the human calendars said that it was March, and in the woods the catkins had not shrivelled on the hazels, yet all day the westerly wind drove rain-storms over Knockdane. The lambs huddled close to their mothers with nothing but their restless tails appearing, when—hey presto—no sooner had they tucked themselves away comfortably, than the squall passed, and the sun blazed out upon the wet skirts of the rain. Raindrops dripped merrily from the hazel-catkins as the wind or a leaping squirrel shook them, and the air was full of the scent of wet earth and breaking buds.

Towards evening the showers became less frequent, and the sun shot long slanting rays over Knockdane. The old sheep coughed as they snatched at the wet grass, and the field resounded with the incessant bleating of the lambs who ran to a strange ewe and were butted aside.

Because White-Lamb still kept his close lamb's coat, and had not yet lost the instincts of his race in the placid vegetable life of his mother, he grew restless towards nightfall, and trotted over to the gate to look at the woods—an unknown land to him. The Night Longing calls to the animals who live under man's dominion as surely as to the Wild Folk, but they very seldom hear it. Sometimes, however, the sleepy cattle in the meadows lose their wits in the dark; and if a man passes by they forget that he is their lord and master, who in the daytime goads them where he will, and only remember that at one time their forefathers charged his naked ancestors through the forest, and gored and trampled upon them. The old impulses are strongest in the young animals, just as among men a boy burns with a hundred noble purposes which he will forget when he becomes a man, and soils his hands in the world's ways.

The path wound away until it was lost to view among the fir trees; but right at the end of the vista, and barred across perpendicularly by the tall stems, was a clearing into which the sunset light slanted. As White-Lamb watched the light on the path, and listened to the wind among the branches, he saw a shadow move among the withered fern stumps, and steal quickly towards him. White-Lamb watched it approach with his pink-tinted ears spread wide, and his innocent face pressed against the lower bar of the gate. At first he thought that the strange beast was a sheep, but a furtive gleam of sunshine touched its back and pointed ears and turned them ruddy. It came on with an easy silent gait, glancing from side to side, and did not perceive White-Lamb until it was quite close to him. Then it stopped, and eyed him narrowly with a pair of keen yellow eyes. White-Lamb felt a vague misgiving, and ran back a few steps towards the flock. The other slunk forward and slipped through a little hole at the side of the gate-post, whence his sharp nose peeped out. A dozen rabbits were playing a little distance down the fence, close to the sheep, and his attention was fixed upon these. Suddenly White-Lamb realised that all was not to his liking, and he uttered a loud and plaintive bleat. Instantly his mother raised her head, saw the intruder, and cried to her companions. The whole flock rushed together, each ewe with her lamb galloping beside her; and forming into a close circle they faced the enemy and stamped an insistent warning: 'Fox! fox!' The rabbits took the alarm at once, without pausing to discover the reason for the stampede. A dozen scuts whisked in the air, and then vanished into the hedgerow. There was, however, one small rabbit who had evidently but just left the nesting burrow, for he showed no fear. He hopped a few feet nearer the hedge, and then raised himself upon his fluffy pad of a tail to peer over the grass.

The fox saw his ears twitch, and glided forward a few feet before making a spring. But the old ewes took the alarm again, and stampeded. As White-Lamb scampered by his mother, his flying hoof struck the little rabbit, and brushed him aside. The flock then wheeled again upon the fox, just in time to see the rabbit's scut uppermost as he rolled head over heels into the runway, and hear the click of the fox's jaws which closed on the empty air at the end of his spring. He stood sulkily watching the sheep for a minute or two; but though he did not fear them individually, yet collectively the old ewes looked dangerously ready to trample upon an enemy in defence of their lambs, and he thought better of it. He turned away and cantered off towards the moor.