CHAPTER III
THE LARCH HILL 'EARTH'
On the sunny side of the wood where the larches spindle up tall and thin, each trying to outstrip the rest in the race for free air and sunshine, is the 'earth' which Stubbs and Grunter dug, as has been already related. It had originally been an old rabbit burrow, but no rabbits had used it for many years, although it was well drained, warm, and dry. It consisted of one long main tunnel, with other side chambers communicating with it, and of a smaller gallery running parallel to the first. The 'earth' had only one main entrance, although there was a rabbit-hole some distance off which opened into the upper of the two principal galleries; but its roof was so low that a badger could hardly have crept along it.
As a spider sits in the centre of his web, so the badgers lay in the middle hall of their abode. Long, grey and sprawling, they snored noisily in their sleep like pigs, with their pied snouts nestled together in the stuffy darkness. At moonrise, however, Grunter woke, punctual as an alarum clock. She rose from the warm bed of moss, and stretched herself so vigorously that she woke her lord, who smote his head against the roof and growled. She glided past him down the passage, and came to the main entrance, where the fresh night air blew in. Grunter was hungry. The last two nights it had rained, and the badgers had lain a-bed, but to-night was fine and mild again. She thrust her long snout right and left, and sampled all the strong damp odours of the night before she ventured to trust herself to the woods; but all was still, and she pattered away. Five minutes later Stubbs stole out. By that mysterious telepathy which is the secret of the Fur Folk, he knew whither she had gone, and followed her down the main highroad of the badgers of Knockdane, under the wet bushes to the fields by the river bank.
Greybrush came along about two hours later, and snuffed thoughtfully at the hole. Greybrush was a Ballymore fox. He had been born in a hedgerow during the spring, and now that autumn was coming on, he sought winter quarters in Knockdane. There were certainly many desirable points about this 'set.' He sat down and sucked his pads, for they were wet with dew, shook his brush plumy again, and meditated. The upshot of his meditations was that he presently entered the 'earth.'