They took little notice of the owl that glided to and fro, screaming as it flew; yet they were so ravenous that they would have killed and eaten him, if they could have caught him, bird of prey though he was. The farmer’s wife lay awake wondering what ailed the screech-owl: the hare in the field bordering the bridle-track also wondered, but like the woman, without surmising the cause. The noise ceased when presently the pack left the yard and made past the sycamore towards the lane, seemingly on the way to the “curlew” moor. When abreast of the broken grindstone, however, the leader, who was at her wits’ end to know where to go, suddenly turned and retraced her steps along the bridle-track. Abrupt as was her turning movement each stoat kept its place as though it were part of a snake, which in truth the long file closely resembled.

Reaching the stone steps into the field where the hare was at pasture, the leader appeared to be in two minds as to whether she should mount them or go straight on. A hedgehog brought her to a decision. He had been drawn from his winter quarters by the open weather, showed just then on the path and instantly attracted her. He was very sleepy, but he saw the stoats coming, immediately curled into a ball, and so awaited their onset.

What savagery the famished creatures exhibited! What determined though futile efforts they made to penetrate the hedgehog’s defence! Blood was drawn, it is true, their heads were smeared with it, but it was their own blood which they licked before again falling tooth and nail on the prickly ball. Their second assault proving as unsuccessful as the first, they formed a ring around the urchin, chattering to unnerve it and so cause it to unfold. All their efforts were vain, the hedgehog was impregnable to moral as to physical attack.

But though the blood-curdling chorus was wasted on the hedgehog, it so affrighted the hare that he broke into a panic-stricken flight, nor did he stop till he had reached the chantry. There he stood listening for the cry he dreaded. His apprehensions however were unwarranted, the stoats were ignorant of his neighbourhood, and on abandoning the hedgehog retreated in the direction of the southern cliffs, slowly at first but more quickly as the night grew old, for fear of being surprised by dawn.

A faint glow suffused the low east when they reached Carn Boscawen, proceeded singly along ledge after ledge to its sea-washed face, clambered between the breaking waves up and up the wet rock and finally crept into crevices beyond reach of the spray.

For a while not a hair of them was to be seen, but the moment the sun rose they appeared at the mouths of the stronghold and lay with their long, gaunt bodies stretched to their full length to catch what little warmth the lurid orb vouchsafed.

In the light of day these night marauders looked the cruel, bloodthirsty bandits they were, the three whom the spell of Arctic cold had ermined presenting an even more fiendish aspect than the others. When too the sun passed behind the angry clouds so that carn and sea, shorn of the rays that gilded them, lay in deep shadow, the outlawed crew seemed to be in harmony with their savage surroundings and no unfit neighbours of the kite perched on the crag above.

By and by, suddenly as they had appeared, they withdrew, curled up on the rocky floor and fell asleep.

What a contrast the hare in his seat on the hill furnished to the carnivorous bandits of the carn! He looked as fearful as they looked bold, his long, quivering ears proclaimed his timidity no less plainly than the prominent eyes that overlooked the moor all the grey afternoon till they turned towards a storm far out at sea where lightning played in a black cloud, below which presently the blood-red sun went down.

And thus was ushered in a night of tragedy with hare and stoats for actors, moor and cliff for setting.

At dusk the hare left his couch and descended the hill to his pasture on Brea Farm. There he wandered from enclosure to enclosure picking up what little herbage he could find. It took him hours to get his fill.

Meanwhile the stoats who had quitted their fastness were heading for the moor, tempted by the presence of some wading birds which they had disturbed the previous night on their return journey. On the way they turned aside here and there in the hope of securing other prey, so that it was within an hour of midnight when they reached the purlieus of the waste, that looked pitch-black beneath the stormy sky.

At the spot where they struck the heath they were two miles from the linhay field which the hare presently left for his usual gallop. So wide however was its surface that nine times out of ten the pack might have hunted and the hare enjoyed his spin without either being aware of the other’s presence; twice it had so happened during the month now within an hour of its close; but the hare’s good fortune had temporarily forsaken him and his time come to stand before the pack.

Black though the night was, had the hare been as alert as usual, he could hardly have failed to discern at least the ghostly forms of the white members of the band in time to secure a long start and perhaps get clean away. Immunity from molestation in the moor explains the poor look-out he kept. His lack of vigilance was to cost him dear, inasmuch as he succeeded in arresting his steps only just in time to avoid running into the pack as it showed above the slight rise that for a few seconds had effectually concealed it from view.

At sight of them he turned and fled, and though more frightened than ever before, did the best thing possible; he made straight for the pool, for he hoped by placing the wide water between him and his pursuers to disconcert them and put an end to the chase.

The stoats followed, forging ahead at their utmost pace, except when they checked their steps and stood still to look about them as is their wont; why, it is impossible to say, but certainly not to give “law” to the quarry. So several seconds ahead of them, the hare reached the pool midway between the islet and the reed-bed, plunged in, floundered through the shallows, and on getting beyond his depth, struck out for the opposite shore.

Ice still covered most of the surface, but following an open channel he got more than half-way across before he found himself confronted by a sheet which, thin and rotten though it was, arrested his progress.

He tried to clamber on to it but the brittle edge broke under his pads. His position was most critical. To make matters worse, the cry of his pursuers now sounded very distinct; they were evidently close to the pool. What if they took to the water and met him as he swam? For he must go back or drown. In the dilemma he turned and struck out for the shore he had left. He seemed to be swimming into the jaws of death. Soon however fortune befriended him. For as he swam he saw at one side a narrow strait just wide enough to admit him, and into it he turned as the pack took to the water, swimming swiftly and with heads held high. They must have viewed the hare had not the moon been completely obscured by a black cloud, which completely shut off the pallid beams that for a brief space had lit the moor.

Soon they passed the narrow opening and approached the barrier. No barrier did it prove to them. They landed with the greatest ease, galloped over the ice, gained the shore and began casting for the quarry. Meanwhile the hare had gained the reed-bed whence, owing to the conspicuousness of the ermined stoats, he was able to follow the movements of the pack, till presently the ghostly forms were swallowed up in the darkness as they made for the further end of the pool.

The hare seizing the opportunity made off, his face set for the “curlew” moor. No longer however does he move with full freedom of limb; the paralysing influence of the stoats is upon him. How he labours as if held back by some restraining hand, how slow his progress! He feels doomed, for escape is impossible and refuge there is none.

Suddenly he stops, as suddenly resumes his way, but in a direction at right angles to his former course.

Across the black waste he has seen the glimmer of light that tells of the presence of man. He is making towards it as to a beacon of hope. By and by he reaches the church, from whose coloured windows the glow proceeds, and from his station amongst the tombs listens to the singing. Whilst he listens there comes from the moor the shrill cry of his pursuers. At the sound he resumes his flight, following the rude road through the village towards Sennen Green, where he halts as if loath to quit the abode of man for the wild beyond. Death is approaching, but it must overtake him; he cannot await his fate. Whilst the bells ring the old year out, the new year in, he lopes on and on past Vellandreath, past Genvor to the lonely Tregiffian cliffs. There from a rise he looks back and sees the extended file of his enemies as they gallop down the opposite slope. The ground in front is studded with rocks. Threading his way among these he finds himself within a score yards of some men lying on the turf. As they lie they form an irregular ring. Into this he passes without an instant’s hesitation and squats in their midst.

The stoats on the other hand fell to silence, stopping motionless by the rocks.

The men were smugglers and all asleep save the sentry, who lay near the edge of the cliff watching so eagerly for the expected boat that he had not heard the stoats’ cry, though it sounded distinct above the roar of the sea.

Presently the man rose to his feet and paced up and down, his oilskins creaking as he moved. Only for a moment did he take his eyes from the dark waters below whilst he ignited the tinder and lit his pipe. Now and again a spark was blown in the direction of the stoats, but they took no more notice of that than of the cry uttered by one of the sleeping smugglers. Nothing would drive the bold, ravenous pack away, at least nothing but dawn; and that was hours and hours distant.

Suddenly a red light came and went near the foot of the cliffs; it was a signal from the boat and was answered by the watch with a hoot like that of a screech-owl. Immediately all was stir, the men jumping to their feet and making for the adit that communicated with the cave into which the boat with its load of kegs had already been taken.

The hare, far from being frightened by the sudden commotion, dogged the steps of the men and sat in a recess in the wall of the tunnel; the stoats who had followed dared not penetrate there; so they stood and watched him from the mouth.

The smugglers worked as if for their lives; two, by means of a long rope, hauling the kegs from the cave to the adit, whilst the other five carried them to the furzebrake on the hillside and hid them amongst the bushes.

The continual passing to and fro of the men cheered the hare in his niche, for it served to alarm the stoats and keep them at a distance.

Scarcely had the last of the kegs been hidden away when one of the smugglers, he who had cried out in his sleep, gave a false alarm, causing the others to rush to the adit, where one after the other they slid down the rope to the cave, all except the sentry, whose duty it was to haul up the line and stow it away. An old hand at the trade and a man of iron nerve, he proceeded to coil the rope in the most leisurely way before he came out of the adit, bringing the rope on his arm. He thought he was alone, but he was not; the hare kept as close to his heels as a dog, while the stoats followed at a short distance.

Dark though it was, the smuggler held along the brink of the cliff till compelled to swerve by a great pile of rocks that looked against the murky sky like a black wall. By and by as he skirted it he stopped and, shifting the rope to his left arm, began feeling the face of the rock with his right. He was searching for the rude steps by which he would reach the summit of the carn to hide the rope, the hare meanwhile remaining so close to his feet that once it actually grazed his sea-boots with its soft side. Presently he found the place and began the ascent, thus leaving the hare to the mercy of the stoats.

Before the smuggler had climbed four feet the hare realised his danger. At once he fled along the edge of the cliff, the stoats, who had already begun to creep towards him, in hot pursuit.

Whilst he was free from the numbing sensation of fear, which had subsided in the friendly presence of man, his relentless persecutors even at their utmost speed seemed almost motionless behind him, but the moment it returned, cramping his powers, he lost ground.

Then he began to look anxiously about him to find a refuge, as in that lay now his only hope of escape.

The sea from half a score caverns bellowed its invitation, but he heeded it not. Only in the last resort would he cast himself over the cliff, so in weariness and fear he struggled on with the terrorising cry of the pack ever in his ears.

Before him lay a small and oddly shaped headland, so narrow at its base that any animal seeking the coast beyond was certain to cross the neck and avoid going round.

Not so the hare. As if fearful of losing touch of the cliff, he took no notice of the short cut, but held on round the promontory till, near the extreme point, he struck and followed a track laid by foxes—a treacherous track, that after winding in and out between overhanging rocks and the lip of the cliff, suddenly ended on the brink of a precipice. He saw the predicament he was in shortly after rounding the point, and despair gripped his heart.

But when he had almost given himself up for lost, a shelf of rock that projected over the track offered asylum if only he could reach it. Once, twice he gathered his limbs, only to recoil from launching himself at the leap, for he felt that it was more than he could compass. Then he listened to the swelling cry; that warned him he had not a moment to lose.

Animals, like men, when face to face with death, perform feats seemingly beyond their powers. Thus it was with the hare, into whose mad spring was concentrated all the force that love of life could rouse. But his greatest efforts merely enabled him to get such a grip of the rock as prevented him from falling back. Frantic was his struggle to complete a lodgment by dragging his hind legs to the shelf. He succeeded just in time to squat as the first of the stoats came galloping round the point and pulled up at the spot where the trail suddenly ended. In a twinkling the rest of the band followed, and recognising the situation, looked to the leader for guidance.

She was, however, reckoning without her host. In as wild a dawn as ever broke upon the Land’s End, the hare leapt from his sanctuary and stole over the rain-lashed moor to Chapel Carn Brea, where, happy in the thought that the downpour would destroy all trace of his trail, he fell soundly asleep, nor even dreamt of the terrible ordeal through which he had passed.

At the end of that time the weather, which had again become bleak and inclement, suddenly softened with the return of the westerly wind, becoming so mild as to savour of spring. The change was felt and responded to by every creature. On St Valentine’s Day when Golden Valley resounded with the love songs of birds, the hare had already set out in search of a mate. Whether influenced by reason or by instinct, he did not seek her along his usual beats, on which he had not once crossed the trail of his kind, but set his face to the north, to the unexplored land he had often looked down on from Bartinney and Chapel Carn Brea; there he was in high hope of meeting her.

So intent was he on his quest that he never stopped to browse, leaving untouched patch after patch of tender herbage in the moorland farms he crossed. Yet he never saw a living thing. He came to the wild which is crowned by the weird rocks of Carn Kenidzhek, and here, standing near the summit, he scrutinised the moonlit waste, apparently a desolate land, a land without life. Just before daybreak, however, there came into view, ghostly as the stoats but very much larger, a creature threading its way in and out among the furze bushes as it made for the Carn. The hare was puzzled as to its identity until it began to ascend the slope, when to his surprise he saw that it was that uncommon thing, a white badger.

What miles on miles he traversed: he visited the hills, he penetrated to the cliffs of Morvah, he turned inland again and roamed wide stretches of moor and down, he skirted Chun^[8] cromlech, and passed within sight of the Men Scryfa as he headed for the Galver, with its upthrust peak conspicuous against the stars. From the Galver he went to Hannibal’s Carn, and presently stood on its highest rock gazing at the plain beneath. His ears were pricked as they had been a score times since sundown to catch the whispers of the waste and perhaps hear the bleat of a doe. He listened as he had never listened before; but there came no call, no sound indeed save the murmur of the dawn wind about the crags; so at last the love-sick fellow forsook his station and returned to the Galver, where after weaving a maze of trails he sought a form high up the slope.

In his lone retreat he felt as safe as on Chapel Carn Brea; he was even more remote from the haunts of man. Yet harriers were already on their way to the meet, and it was that very ground where he sat that was to be hunted.

The Squire of Trengwainton had breakfasted by candlelight, and as the clock over the stables was striking half-past six, he mounted his favourite grey mare and started out attired in full hunting costume, green coat, white breeches, boots reaching almost to the knee, and a velvet cap that well became his clean-shaven face. Twelve couple of hounds followed at his horse’s heels, the little procession as it made its way along the avenue of beeches being closed by Sam Noy, the whipper-in.

He had arrived in Cornwall from Pembroke only three weeks earlier, after a voyage exciting even for those disturbed times. The schooner in which he sailed was attacked off the Land’s End by a privateer which had been harassing St Ives, and compelled to run before the wind in order to escape capture. Under cover of darkness she got away, and reached St Ives with no more damage than a hole in her mainsail and the loss of her topmast. But the mayor and the watch mistaking the rakish-looking craft for another Frenchman, had opened fire from the three four-pounders on the “Island”—luckily without effect, the balls dropping at least fifty yards short.

Awaiting him at Four Parishes^[9] were Squire Tregenna, to whose gun-fire he had been exposed in St Ives Bay, Squire Praed of Trevethoe, a few yeomen, some crofters for the most part fairly mounted, and a promiscuous crowd of men afoot, amongst whom the fiddler’s pinched face peeped out between the rough beards of two tall smugglers, and three or four ne’er-do-wells were marked off by their careless slouch from the sturdier forms of half a dozen miners.

After greetings had been exchanged, Sir Tudor appealed to Jim Curnow of Towednack, whose keenness and knowledge he had already noticed: “Where shall we draw first?”

“Try the ground about the Galver,” said Curnow, “if there’s a hare left in the country she’ll be there.”

So it was decided; and all moved off to the hill, where the pack scattered freely in search of the game.

They were a level lot of hounds, very much alike to a stranger, yet as different in the eyes of the squire as were their names to his ears. He had named them himself, most happily Squire Praed thought, on hearing Sir Tudor call in turn on Melody, Corisande, Guinevere, Merlin, Cymro, and Caradoc.

Awhile each hound worked separately, indifferent to all around, one would have thought, yet in reality keenly observant of the others, for as soon as Trueboy waved his stern half a score flocked to him.

They are at once all excitement, as well they may be; they have hit the line of the hare, and are following it between the two big boulders where he passed on his way to Hannibal’s Carn, the tan splashes on their coats gleaming like russet gold in the slant sunlight, their musical voices awakening the echoes of the rocks, and thrilling every member of the little field.

His mind was full of his purpose as he skirted the Liddens, and a little way beyond them he stopped to satisfy himself that he had time to carry out his plan before the hounds came up. Though he listened intently, he heard nothing; his pursuers had been delayed in the ploughed field as he expected: he had ample opportunity for his manœuvre.

Yet the whole plan came to nought. On reaching the chantry he suddenly leapt aside as if from an ambuscade, for he found himself in the presence of man. There on a rock sat an antiquary sketching the ruin, and so engrossed by his task that he never saw the hare. Even if he had he would not have raised a finger to scare it, much less betray its refuge to the hounds. But the hare’s faith in man was gone. He fled down the hill towards Brea Farm, save for the thud of the flail in the barn silent as in winter, and from thence to the moor, over which he rather loped than galloped, for he was getting exhausted.

“Gone right over the ‘curley’ moor straight for Hayl Kimbra Pool. But what’s the hurry? Stop and have a bit of croust,^[10] a bit o’ heavy cake.”^[11]

“Lor’ bless the boy, ’tes no time for feasting nor fiddling. Did ’ee ever hear such pretty music as they little dogs give out?”

And without waiting for an answer the fiddler went off as if his life depended on being in at the finish.

Andrew had directed him well, for the hare had gone to the pool where he had his first swim. The hounds following, crossed it as if nothing could live before them; but on the far side of the moor, where beyond Trevescan it slopes gently to the sea, they were in difficulties. The hare had run along a stone wall, returned a score yards on his trail, leapt into the track it bordered, and gone off in the direction of his cliff retreat, now his goal.

“’Tes the Land’s End.”

Within four days of the chase he returned to Hannibal’s Carn, where he found a mate worthy of his fine qualities, and for a time his happiness was complete.

All his days he remained true to his native hill; in the end he crept beneath the ruins of the chantry, and there the toad guarded the portal of his death-chamber.