The sun had climbed quite high before the sparrow-hawk came swinging round the wood. He spied the tell-tale white ears a hundred yards away, and turned towards them. He slanted down at fifty miles an hour, glanced aside six feet from the rush-tuft, and switch-backed upwards again—rabbit verily, but doubtful—uncanny—white. Again he stooped and hovered. This stillness, this whiteness transcended his experience. It was too blatantly conspicuous—there was surely something in it not apparent to the eye. Perhaps it was a trap. As the hawk paused, his grim shadow fluttered above the youngster in the clover, and the latter lost his nerve. He ran a few inches and crouched again. The hawk saw a quarry which was normal and probably safe. Besides, he was hungry. He dropped on to the grass, and pitching lightly, struck. There was a little cry; and then flying low, overweighted with his burden, he skimmed across the field.
That was the first, but not the last time, that danger turned aside from the—white rabbit I was about to say, but let us rather give her the dignity of capitals, a dignity ever afterwards hers in Knockdane, and speak of her as the White Rabbit. For the rest of the day no living things but larks and bumble bees came near, although once or twice a bullock blundered by and set the rabbits' hearts thit-thudding. Towards evening the mother-rabbit came up the hill to the nesting burrow. The babies heard her coming well enough, but two—the White One and a brown—were too well drilled to budge. The third, however, ran to her unsummoned, and was instantly punished for his disobedience, for she kicked him head over heels, and then signalled to the others that their time of waiting was over. Whether she noticed that one was missing I cannot say. The Fur Folk have no time to grieve. She gathered the three remaining ones together, and fed them and licked them all over tenderly with soft whisker kisses.
They spent that night on the hill. When it rained the babies sheltered under their mother's soft coat and did not know how cold it was. Brownie could have told how sharp the night winds were, and how wet the ground, but the little bodies under her white vest were warm, and that was compensation enough for her.
The next day they again lay out on the hill; but alas! the sparrow-hawk has a good memory, and where he has killed one day, he will come the next. Thus it happened that on the second evening only two answered the mother's signal—the White Rabbit and a brown brother.
On the third day Brownie took them down the field. It was dangerous, for the hedge was full of enemies, but she dared not risk the hawk again. Even the peeps from the hill had not prepared the little ones for anything so immense as the world into which they came, blue sky overhead and grass—a perfect forest peopled with strange beasts—all around them. Brownie was ravenous, and the young ones, watching her tear off grass blades and eat them up, ventured for the first time on imitation. She kept her family in the ditch all day, she herself lying hidden close at hand with eyes and ears always alert for danger. Nevertheless, for all her care, the little brown rabbit strayed too far from her side, and being young and ignorant, he never heard the sniff-sniff of the stoat hunting down a runway, until it was too late. Then Brownie, who knew the meaning of that pitiful minor cry, very quickly and silently shepherded her one remaining young one over the fence into the next field; and the scent was cold before Keen resumed his hunting.
So only one of the litter remained, and for three days Brownie guarded her jealously. On the fourth morning very early they went out to feed. The dewfall had been very heavy, and soaked them from nose tip to tail, and the bats wheeled overhead. The coat of the little White Rabbit looked weird in the gloom as she sat up and tried to comb her whiskers as her mother did. Of the short hot nights of June—of their mystery, and their majesty, and the ways of their children, what do men know? Nothing, but they mar much. Only the white owl had seen Jack Skehan go his rounds at sunset, and he, who, happy bird, lived where pole traps were unknown, how could he know the significance of what was left on the hedge bank? So it came to pass that at sunrise, when the larks were singing on the hill, and the whitethroats babbling in the brambles, Brownie, slithering through the hedge with her suckling behind her, slipped her head into a snare cunningly set against a burrow mouth, and somersaulted into the ditch, drawing the noose tight round her neck. At the first alarm the little one bolted and hid tremulously in a clump of buttercups, not daring to move for several minutes. Then, as all was still and the robins began to sing again, she ventured to peep out. Her mother stood raised on her hind legs as she had often seen her before when about to climb such a bank; but now Brownie leaned there statue-still, her hind paws just dragging on the ground. The White Rabbit did not understand it at all. She bit off a few grass blades and tried to chew them up, but they seemed hard and stringy to her unaccustomed teeth, and she ventured to nuzzle at her mother's soft coat. It was quite warm, but Brownie took no notice of the caress; and when the little one pushed against her, she swung ever so gently to and fro.
The sun rose over the crest of Garry's Hill, and the dragon-flies—winged needles of red and blue—hawked backwards and forwards over the brambles. The White Rabbit did not stray very far from the place; she waited for her mother to go on, but Brownie gave no signal, nor did she stir. The little one grew uneasy, and raising herself on her fluffy tail licked her mother's flank to show that she was hungry, but even this never-failing appeal received no answer. Nevertheless soon afterwards, when Jack Skehan went the round of his snares, he found a doe rabbit hanging in the hedge bottom with her neck broken; and nestling at her side, tiptoeing up to reach, a little white rabbit was helping herself to a warm drink. Even in death Brownie fulfilled the first office of motherhood.
How the White Rabbit knew that man was dangerous I cannot say. Hitherto she had innocently trusted every bird and beast; but bolt she did, and only just in time, as a dirty brown hand snatched at her. She ran up the hedge as fast as her stumpy legs could carry her, stubbing her nose against hemlock stalks, and tripping over bramble trailers. It seemed to her that she had run many miles, but as a matter of fact it was only ten yards before she flopped down, utterly breathless, with her flanks heaving. For the first time she was afraid—terribly afraid. Every leaf concealed an enemy, every rustle seemed a footstep. Fear was abroad on the hedgeside. The shadow of the man's presence lingered even when his footsteps had passed into the distance. A broody blackbird 'chinked' anxiously, and a pigeon wheeled aside with a 'swoof.' A few inches from where the little rabbit lay gaped a bolt-hole of the hedge burrow, and her instinct bade her creep within into the cool, comfortable darkness.
This is how the White Rabbit entered upon her life in the woods, orphaned, with nothing to guide her but the ancestral code which every rabbit knows. However, she had already learned three things, and important ones too—that hawks are dangerous, stoats still more so, and men are to be dreaded most of all.