The spoor was impressed deeply in the muddy ground where a stream ran by the path. The broad toes were well defined, and the punctures of the great digging claws had cut the clay. 'There's badgers in the auld earth again,' said Paddy Magragh, standing up.
It was a mild evening in March, with a grey sky streaked with faint reflections of the unseen sunset. Paddy turned to the right, up a track used more often by the Fur Folk than by man. There was a shallow pit here, and under the brim opened the mouth of a big burrow. Generations of persevering diggers had lived and died there, and each had added his quota to the mound outside the hole, and excavated yet another chamber among the honeycomb of galleries tunnelled into the hill. However, for some years, the 'earth' had been empty, and the dead leaves had drifted thickly against the entrance. The rabbits had dug burrows about the place; and after a hard-pressed fox had taken refuge there, two winters before, Magragh himself had built up the 'set' with stones and earth, so strongly that fox-pads could not open it. Now, however, the barricade was scraped away, and leaves and grass littered the mound outside. Magragh looked up at the fading sky and turned homewards, but after a few steps he returned. Had Fate set him in another sphere, he might have been a great naturalist. As it was, although he had a profound knowledge of those of the Wild Folk who furnished 'shpoort' for himself and his fellow men, of the lesser breeds he was almost entirely ignorant. Nevertheless, the spirit of the true naturalist slept in him, unsuspected, and to-night, for once in a way, it awoke. He would not admit to himself that he desired to see the inmates of this burrow without chance of 'shpoort' or slaughter, but muttered shamefacedly: 'Shure, I'll watch a bit see would the craythurs come out to-night.' Those who spend much time alone under the free sky acquire this habit of soliloquy; indeed, after a while, each finds himself his own best company.
Paddy Magragh sat down under a tree, and watched the light fade from the surrounding bushes. The bats hawked to and fro, and a blackbird 'chink-chinked' in notes like the dripping of water. A rabbit came out of a hole hard by with his scut buttoned down, and slid away to feed, so softly that his footsteps never stirred the leaves; but he did not see Paddy Magragh, who, in his tattered coat and broken boots, looked as shapeless and as knotted as the old stump against which he leaned. The woods were quite quiet but for the trickling of the little stream near at hand, and even the nibbling of the rabbit in the brambles was plainly audible.
When it was so dark that the shrews could only be located by their voices as they squabbled in the dead leaves, there came a rustle at the 'earth' mouth, and a striped snout was poked out. After the snout slid a long grey body—a shadow among the shadows—humped and clumsy, yet so silent that not a twig snapped under the heavy pads. Magragh sat with his hands clasped over his 'ash-plant.' The badger snuffed suspiciously, then waddled off by a little, well-worn path. A minute or two afterwards, from the stream, could be heard the sound of water lapped down a thirsty throat. Paddy was wise. He sat for another ten minutes. The silence grew more tense and the darkness deeper. Then, without any warning, a badger, larger than the last, scurried across the pit so quickly that Magragh's old eyes had barely caught sight of him before he vanished in the shadows.
'A pair o' thim,' said the old man, hobbling homewards.
A week later he waited there again; waited until the woodcock had settled down to feed, and the light was almost gone, leaving the pit so dark that his eyes saw nothing when his ears caught the rustle of a single hunter turning up the hill from the 'earth.'
'There's cubs wid'in,' opined Paddy Magragh.