Suddenly there was a flash—and a loud report split the silence of the woods. Cur Dog bounded his own height into the air, his howl died into a sob—he rolled over twice and then lay still.
'Not bad in the twilight,' said the keeper, jerking the cartridge from his gun.
Fluff-Button heard the report as he scudded through the bushes, but he never noticed that the galloping feet behind him had ceased. Some fifty yards further on was an old rabbit burrow. He dived into it, and lay panting in its bottommost recess until long after moonset. But no Cur Dog came to nose at the burrow's mouth.
Thus Fluff-Button might have cried quits with White-Lamb for the time that the latter summoned the flock to face the fox. But though the next evening found them together in the Sheep Field, yet they fed placidly side by side and exchanged no word nor sign; for it is not the way of the Wild Folk to show gratitude to one another.
CHAPTER II
THE SPRING LONGING
In the valley at the foot of Knockdane Hill there is a great meadow. It is like an island surrounded by the sea, for the woods come close up to its hedge on all sides except on the east, where the river runs; and just as an island may have a lake in the middle, so in the centre of the Big Meadow there is a little copse. The trees in the copse are sycamore and red-stemmed pine, and in spring the ground is carpeted with celandines and anemones. In the copse there is a hollow where long ago men used to quarry out stones; but now it is never used, and the heaps of flints are draped with bramble and cinquefoil trails.
