all on fire. Then something happened, and down I went among the broken
china and hit my head against the leg of a table. Next came a kind of
whirling blackness and I woke up here."

"A fit or a stroke," I suggested.

"Both, I think, sir. The fit first--I have had 'em before, and the
stroke afterwards--against the leg of the table. Anyway they finished me
between them, thanks to that little beast."

Then it was that I saw a very strange thing, a hare in a rage. It seemed
to go mad, of course I mean spiritually mad. Its eyes flashed fire; it
opened its mouth and shut it after the fashion of a suffocating fish. At
last it spoke in its own way--I cannot stop to explain in further detail
the exact manner of speech or rather of its equivalent upon the Road.

"Man, Man," it exclaimed, "you say that I finished you. But what did you
do to me? You shot me. Look at the marks upon my back. You coursed me
with your running dogs. You hunted me with your hounds. You dragged me
out of the sea into which I swam to escape you by death, and threw me
living to the pack," and the Hare stopped exhausted by its own fury.

"Well," replied the Man coolly, "and suppose I, or my people, did, what
of it? Why shouldn't I? You were a beast, I was a man with dominion over
you. You can read all about that in the Book of Genesis."

"I never heard of the Book of Genesis," said the Hare, "but what does
dominion mean? Does this Book of Genesis say that it means the right to
torment that which is weaker than the tormentor?"