“I must go back. The wolf only gave me leave of absence for one day.”
Then he told them all, and his bitter tears flowed as he spoke. It was hard to go, and yet he must not stay. He had given his word, and to a rabbit his word is law. And all the aunts and cousins declared with one voice: “Thou speakest truth, oh squint-eyed one. Once given, the spoken word is holy. Never in all our tribe was it known that a rabbit was false to his word!”
A tale is soon told, but a rabbit’s life flies faster still. In the morning they greeted the squint-eyed one, and before evening came he parted from his young wife.
“Assuredly the wolf will eat me,” he said. “Therefore be thou faithful to me. And if children shall be born to thee, educate them strictly; best of all, apprentice them in a circus; there they will be taught not only to beat the drum, but also to shoot peas from a pop-gun.”
Then suddenly, as though lost in thought, he added, remembering the wolf—
“It may be, though, that the wolf will—ha! ha!—pardon me!”
And that was the last of him they saw.
Meantime, while the squint-eyed one was making merry and getting married, great misfortunes were happening in the tract of country which divided him from the wolfs lair. In one place heavy rains had fallen, so that the river, which the rabbit swam across so easily the day before, overflowed and inundated ten versts of ground. In another place King Aaron declared war against King Nikìta, and a battle was pitched right in the rabbit’s path. In a third place the cholera appeared, so that quarantine was established for a hundred versts round. And, besides all that, wolves, foxes, owls—they seemed to lie in wait at every step.
The squint-eyed one was prudent; he had so calculated his time as to leave himself three hours extra; but when one hindrance after another beset him his heart sank. He ran without stopping all the evening, half the night; the stones cut his feet, the fur on his sides hung in ragged tufts, torn by the thorny branches, a mist covered his eyes, blood and foam fell from his mouth,—and still he had so far to go! And his friend, the hostage, haunted him constantly, as though alive before him. Now he stands like a sentinel in front of the wolfs lair, thinking: “In so many hours my dear brother-in-law will return to deliver me.”... When the rabbit thought of that, he darted on yet faster. Mountains, valleys, forests, marshes—it was all the same to him. Often he felt as though his heart would break; then he would crush it down, by sheer force of will, that fruitless emotion might not distract him from his great aim. He had no time now for sorrow or tears: he must think of nothing but how to tear his friend from the wolf’s jaws.