ess across the dirty floor.

The light showed a little door in a wall beside the kitchen
fireplace--a little iron door belonging to a brick oven, of that
old-fashioned sort that used to be heated with faggots of wood.

And presently at the same moment Peter and Benjamin noticed that
whenever they shook the window--the little door opposite shook in
answer. The young family were alive; shut up in the oven!

[Illustration]

Benjamin was so excited that it was a mercy he did not awake Tommy
Brock, whose snores continued solemnly in Mr. Tod's bed.

But there really was not very much comfort in the discovery. They could
not open the window; and although the young family was alive--the little
rabbits were quite incapable of letting themselves out; they were not
old enough to crawl.

After much whispering, Peter and Benjamin decided to dig a tunnel. They
began to burrow a yard or two lower down the bank. They hoped that they
might be able to work between the large stones under the house; the
kitchen floor was so dirty that it was impossible to say whether it was
made of earth or flags.

[Illustration]

They dug and dug for hours. They could not tunnel straight on account of
stones; but by the end of the night they were under the kitchen floor.
Benjamin was on his back, scratching upwards. Peter's claws were worn
down; he was outside the tunnel, shuffling sand away. He called out that
it was morning--sunrise; and that the jays were making a noise down
below in the woods.

Benjamin Bunny came out of the dark tunnel, shaking the sand from his
ears; he cleaned his face with his paws. Every minute the sun shone
warmer on the top of the hill. In the valley there was a sea of white
mist, with golden tops of trees showing through.

Again from the fields down below in the mist there came the angry cry of
a jay--followed by the sharp yelping bark of a fox!

Then those two rabbits lost their heads completely. They did the most
foolish thing that they could have done. They rushed into their short
new tunnel, and hid themselves at the top end of it, under Mr. Tod's
kitchen floor.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Mr. Tod was coming up Bull Banks, and he was in the very worst of
tempers. First he had been upset by breaking the plate. It was his own
fault; but it was a china plate, the last of the dinner service that had
belonged to his grandmother, old Vixen Tod. Then the midges had been
very bad. And he had failed to catch