'And the worms we carried?' said Bluebell. 'Don't forget them.'
As they came near the hollow they could hear that it was not empty. Evidently some of the other rabbits had had the same idea.
'Let's see how close we can get before they spot us,' said Silver. 'Real Campion style - come on.'
They approached very quietly, up wind from the north. Peeping over the edge, they saw Vilthuril and her litter of four lying in the sun. Their mother was telling the young rabbits a story.
'So after they had swum the river,' said Vilthuril, 'El-ahrairah led his people on in the dark, through a wild, lonely place. Some of them were afraid, but he knew the way and in the morning he brought them safely to some green fields, very beautiful, with good, sweet grass. And here they found a warren; a warren that was bewitched. All the rabbits in this warren were in the power of a wicked spell. They wore shining collars round their necks and sang like the birds and some of them could fly. But for all they looked so fine, their hearts were dark and tharn. So then El-ahrairah's people said, "Ah see, these are the wonderful rabbits of Prince Rainbow. They are like princes themselves. We will live with them and become princes too." '
Vilthuril looked up and saw the newcomers. She paused for a moment and then went on.
'But Frith came to Rabscuttle in a dream and warned him that the warren was enchanted. And he dug into the ground to find where the spell was buried. Deep he dug, and hard was the search, but at last he found that wicked spell and dragged it out. So they all fled from it, but it turned into a great rat and flew at El-ahrairah. Then Al-ahrairah fought the rat, up and down, and at last he held it, pinned under his claws, and it turned into a great, white bird which spoke to him and blessed him.'
'I seem to know this story,' whispered Hazel, 'but I can't remember where I've heard it.'
Bluebell sat up and scratched his neck with his hind leg. The little rabbits turned round at the interruption and in a moment had tumbled up the side of the hollow, squeaking 'Hazel-rah! Hazel-rah!' and jumping on Hazel from all sides.
'Here, wait a minute,' said Hazel, cuffing them off. 'I didn't come here to get mixed up in a fight with a lot of roughs like you! Let's hear the rest of the story.'
'But there's a man coming on a horse, Hazel-rah,' said one of the young rabbits. 'Oughtn't we to run into the wood?'
'How can you tell?' asked Hazel.' I can't hear anything.'
'Neither can I,' said Silver, listening with his ears up.
The little rabbit looked puzzled.
'I don't know how, Hazel-rah,' he answered, 'but I'm sure I'm not mistaken.'
They waited for some little time, while the red sun sank lower. At last, just as Vilthuril was about to go on with the story, they heard hooves on the turf and the horseman appeared from the west, cantering easily along the track towards Cannon Heath Down.
'He won't bother us,' said Silver. 'No need to run: he'll just go by. You're a funny chap, though, young Threar, to spot him so far off.'
'He's always doing things like that,' said Vilthuril. 'The other day he told me what a river looked like and said he'd seen it in a dream. It's Fiver's blood, you know. It's only to be expected with Fiver's blood.'
'Fiver's blood?' said Hazel. 'Well, as long as we've got some of that I dare say we'll be all right. But you know, it's turning chilly here, isn't it? Come on, let's go down, and hear the rest of that story in a good, warm burrow. Look, there's Fiver over on the bank now. Who's going to get to him first?'
A few minutes later there was not a rabbit to be seen on the down. The sun sank below Ladle Hill and the autumn stars began to shine in the darkening east - Perseus and the Pleiades, Cassiopeia, faint Pisces and the great square of Pegasus. The wind freshened, and soon myriads of dry beech leaves were filling the ditches and hollows and blowing in gusts across the dark miles of open grass. Underground, the story continued.
Epilogue
He did look far
Into the service of the time, and was
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long,
But on us both did haggish age steal on,
And wore us out of act ...
Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well
He was part of my dream, of course - but then I was part of his dream, too.
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking-Glass
'And what happened in the end?' asks the reader, who has followed Hazel and his comrades in all their adventures and returned with them at last to the warren where Fiver brought them from the fields of Sandleford. The wise Mr Lockley has told us that wild rabbits live for two or three years. He knows everything about rabbits: but all the same, Hazel lived longer than that. He lived a tidy few summers - as they say in that part of the world - and learned to know well the changes of the downs to spring, to winter and to spring again. He saw more young rabbits than he could remember. And sometimes, when they told tales on a sunny evening by the beech trees, he could not clearly recall whether they were about himself or about some other rabbit hero of days gone by.