The sun was beginning to set when Hazel woke to
see Acorn listening and sniffing in the silence,
between two white-skinned flints. The light was
thicker, the breeze had dropped and the beans
were still.


Pipkin was stretched out a little way away. A
yellow-and-black burying beetle, crawling across
the white fur of his belly, stopped, waved its short,
curved antennae and then moved on again.


Hazel grew tense with sudden misgiving. He knew
that these beetles come to dead bodies, on which they
feed and lay their eggs. They will dig away the earth
from under the bodies of small creatures, such as
shrew mice and fallen fledglings, and then lay their
eggs on them before covering them with soil.


Surely Pipkin could not have died in his sleep? Hazel
sat up quickly. Acorn started and turned toward him
and the beetle scurried away over the pebbles as Pipkin
moved and woke.


The next moment all the rabbits leaped up in panic.
From close at hand the sound of a shot tore across the
fields. A peewit rose screaming. The echoes came back
in waves, like a pebble rolling round a box, and from
the wood across the river came the clattering of wood
pigeons' wings among the branches.


In an instant the rabbits were running in all directions
through the bean rows, each one tearing by instinct
toward holes that were not there. Hazel stopped short on
the edge of the beans. Looking about him, he could see
none of the others.


He waited, trembling, for the next shot: but there was
silence. Then he felt, vibrating along the ground, the
steady tread of a man going away beyond the crest over
which they had come that morning. At that moment Silver
appeared, pushing his way through the plants close by.


The other rabbits were beginning to reach the hedge as
Bigwig hopped down the bank and crouched on the verge
of the road. From beyond the bend came the sound of
another approaching car. Hazel and Silver watched tensely.


The car appeared, flashing green and white, and raced
down toward Bigwig. For an instant it filled the whole
world with noise and fear. Then it was gone and Bigwig's
fur was blowing in the whack of wind that followed it
down the hedges.


He jumped back up the bank among the staring rabbits.
"See? They don't hurt you," said Bigwig. "As a matter of
fact, I don't think they're alive at all. But I must
admit I can't altogether make it out."


As on the riverbank, Blackberry had moved away and was
already down on the road on his own account, sniffing
out toward the middle, halfway between Hazel and the bend.
They saw him start and jump back to the shelter of the bank.


"What is it?" said Hazel. Blackberry did not answer,
and Hazel and Bigwig hopped toward him along the verge.
He was opening and shutting his mouth and licking his
lips, much as a cat does when something disgusts it.


"You say they're not dangerous, Bigwig," he said
quietly."But I think they must be, for all that." In
the middle of the road was a flattened, bloody mass
of brown prickles and white fur, with small black feet
and snout crushed round the edges.


The flies crawled upon it, and here and there the sharp
points of gravel pressed up through the flesh.