It was many minutes before the two could be separated, for the badger clung to his dying adversary with a tenacity which defied them all. Then the dog lay limp and still, and Stubbs himself was in little better plight.
James Kinchella, completely sobered, picked up the body of his dog and walked in silence to the gate. The men made way for him to pass, and there were no more jeers nor laughter. 'Ye should put a bullet into that felly's head, Borrigan,' growled the owner of the other dead dog.
But Borrigan knew that the publican at Rathmore would pay well for the loan of the badger, and, without heeding the openly expressed anger of the men, he drove Stubbs back to the barn, and locked the door.
Some hours later the last drunken shouts had died away, and the yard was quiet once more. Stubbs had been hiding in a corner under a wisp of straw, but now that the daylight—the hateful daylight—and the noise were gone, he ventured to creep out. He was very tired, and his wounds were stiff and sore; nevertheless he was determined to escape. He shuffled round the place, testing every brick in the walls. Presently one pale moon-beam filtered through the keyhole. The moon was rising just as he had seen her rise night after night, behind the larches in front of the badger earth, miles away in Knockdane. There was only one crack, and that a very little one; nevertheless he worked his claws into the interstice and dug. Some minutes' hard labour, and then the loosened brick fell out. Inside, the mortar had crumbled a little, and broke away in cakes; nevertheless the bricks were sound, and now and then one jammed obliquely across the opening, and it gave him much trouble to dislodge it. At the end of two hours he had made quite a creditable breach in the masonry; but the wall was far more strongly built than that of most Irish barns, and he seemed as far as ever from the fresh air. Time after time he drew back panting, his tongue dry with dust; but nothing in the woods is stouter than a badger's claws except a badger's heart, and he always fell to work again. By and by he came to a place where the bricks had broken, and he tore them away more easily, scraping them out behind him with his sturdy hind-legs. Once a shrewd kick sent one flying across the barn with a clatter, and Stubbs scurried into the straw, in terror lest the men should be upon him again; but luckily Borrigan slept soundly, and never dreamed of how his captive was employing the night.
The moonlight began to fade, and the breeze which heralds the dawn sighed around the farm. Stubbs knew instinctively that morning was not far away, and that were he not free by then his chances of escape would be poor indeed. But surely a fresher draught blew through the stones? He stuck in his claws and scraped again, and five minutes later a brick fell—not inside the barn, but outwards with a thud into the field behind. He had made an opening at last. It was child's play to enlarge the hole that his head might enter; and where a badger's head and shoulders can go the rest of him can follow. He wormed his way between the bricks, and tumbled head over heels into the nettle bed below the wall.
No one saw him canter across the fields. The grass was soaked with dew, and the moon, red and luminous in the haze, looked at him like a friendly eye. He pattered along at his best pace, for the east was growing bright, and he feared lest daylight should find him in the open. He knew the country immediately round Knockdane as he knew the passage of his own burrow, but these fields were strange to him. However, he picked his way with that unerring instinct which is the peculiar heritage of the Wild Folk, and of men who live as the Wild Folk live. He turned northwards, and, fording the trout stream where he paused to drink deeply and cool his sore feet, entered the low-lying fields which lie between Coolgraney and Knockdane. The grass was all but hidden under a blue blur of scabious, and the cobwebs in the hedges were elaborately studded with dew-drops. In some places the corn was already ripening, and the sparrows harvested there before the farmer was astir. A kestrel patrolled the fields for breakfast, and a hare lilted back to her form. Lazy pigeons flapped over the barley fields, and the rabbits kicked up their scuts and bolted into the hedges as the badger trudged past.
As he climbed the long slopes at the back of Knockdane, the early beams of the August sunrise shot over the hill. A cock-pheasant, gobbling blackberries, ran away at his approach, and boomed, crowing, over the hedge. Something must indeed be amiss that the badger was astir after sunrise. Stubbs had never seen the sun so high in all his life, and to his eyes the whole world was bathed in perplexing glare—green, blue, and golden. He climbed painfully over the boundary wall and into the grateful shadows of the wood, where the mists, as though entangled in the tree-trunks, were long in lifting.
He turned down the well-known track, and presently, like the gates of a city of refuge, the mouth of the 'earth' opened before him. Not a leaf stirred, but scent lay long on the warm air, and his nose told him that Grunter was down there before him. He slid underground, and limped through the comfortable darkness to the dormitory. There she slept with her limbs extended awkwardly. She did not awaken; and Stubbs, flinging himself down with his head between her fore-paws, closed his eyes with a sigh of content. Two minutes later he was completely oblivious to light or darkness, man or beast, as he sank into a blessed sleep which bade fair to last far into the succeeding night.
