Just as once before in their lives Grey Puss had rescued them from the willow stump, so did she rescue them now from the burial-mound.
This time it was so simple! They knew all about it in advance—and she had only to place herself at their head and lead on....
They left the Hill Farm’s fertile fields, and crossed right over to the other side of the village. There, near a disused peat-pit, they found a dilapidated turf-house, in the deserted loft of which they made their home.
CHAPTER TEN
THE BEST CAT
Big-cat knew the neighbourhood thoroughly for a distance of at least two miles in every direction.
Along fence and ditch, which were his hunting-paths, he crept in search of his prey....
Then he disappeared in a cornfield, and commenced his laborious stalking operations, the thick forest of corn-stalks making constant demands on his skill.
The green, brown-jointed stems stood quivering and swaying in the wind; their withered, rust-spotted leaf-tips scratched his nose and poked him in the eyes, while inflicting constant torture to his soft, sensitive moustache. But once in the field he was unmindful of such trifles, and with noiseless steps he stole along utterly absorbed, like the true sportsman he was, in the breathless exaltation of the chase.
He was alone with Nature ... and in his ears sounded her unique harmonies: the swishing of the wind through the poplar-top—that full, rich music with its sharp undertone which could only be fully appreciated by senses as finely attuned as his—and the thin, eternal seething of the barley or the rattling of the oats, were to him the earth’s song of love; he was its best cat, its greatest and happiest hunter!