fine lot of young bunnies with tails on the frisk scour everywhere over
the warren. Up and down the grassy dips and yellow piles of wind-drift,
and in and out of the ferny coves and tussocks of rush and ragwort, they
scamper, and caper, and chase one another, in joy that the winter is
banished at last, and the glorious sun come back again.

Suddenly, as at the wave of a wand, they all stop short and listen. The
sun is behind them, low and calm, there is not a breath of wind to
stir their flax, not even the feather of a last year's bloom has moved,
unless they moved it. Yet signal of peril has passed among them; they
curve their soft ears for the sound of it, and open their sensitive
nostrils, and pat upon the ground with one little foot to encourage
themselves against the panting of their hearts and the traitorous length
of their shadows.

Ha! Not for nothing was their fear this day. An active and dangerous
specimen of the human race was coming, lightly and gracefully skimming
the moss, above salt-water reach, of the stepping-stones. The steps
are said to be a thousand years old, and probably are of half that age,
belonging to a time when sound work was, and a monastery flourished
in the valley. Even though they come down from great Hercules himself,
never have they been crossed by a prettier foot or a fairer form than
now came gayly over them. But the rabbits made no account of that. To
the young man with the adze they were quite accustomed, and they liked
him, because he minded his own business, and cared nothing about theirs;
but of this wandering maiden they had no safe knowledge, and judged the
worst, and all rushed away, some tenscore strong, giving notice to him
as they passed the boat that he also had better be cautious.

Daniel was in a sweet temper now, by virtue of hard labor and gratified