dissolved into
the "stop."

What happened in there it was too dark to see, but not to hear; and
what one could hear was--pitiful. He was there some time, for your
hedgehog rarely hurries; and when he came out again, his little pig's
eyes gleaming red under their spined cowl, it was with the same
snuffling, softly grunting deliberation with which he had gone in; but
the pale moon, that showed the gleam in his eyes, showed also blood on
his snout, and on the bristles of his forefeet, blood.

Then, slowly, snorting, sniffing very audibly--as loud as a big dog
often does--grunting softly in an undertone, as if talking to himself,
he departed, rustling through the grass, leaving an irregular winding
track behind in the dew and the gossamer, as he searched, eternally
searched, for food.

The hedgehog moved through the night as if he owned it and had no fear
of anything on earth; but many, it would seem, had cause to fear him.
He turned and snorted, and snatched up a slug. Three very quick and
suggestive--quite audible--scrunches, and it was gone. He described a
half-circle, sniffing very loudly, and chopped up a grub. He paused
for a fraction to nose out a beetle, and disposed of it with the same
quick three or four chopping scrunches. (It sounded rather like a
child eating toast-crusts.) He continued, always wandering devious,
always very busy and ant-like, always snorting loudly; grabbed another
beetle, and then a worm--all by scent, apparently--and reached the
hedge-ditch, where, in the pitch-darkness, he could still be heard
snorting and scrunching hapless insects, slugs, and worms at scarcely
more than one-minute intervals. And he never stopped. He seemed to
have been appointed by Nature as a sort of machine, a spiked "tank," to
sniff tirelessly about, reducing the surplus population of pests, as if
he were under a curse--as, indeed, the whole of the great order of
little beasts to which he belonged, the Insectivora, are--which,
afflicting him with an insatiable hunger, drove him everlastingly to
hunt blindly through the night for gastronomic horrors, and to eat 'em.
Anyway, he did it, and in doing it seemed to make himself worthy of the
everlasting thanks and protection of the people who owned that
land--thanks which to date he had never received.

Strange to say, he never stopped of his own free-will, though he was
stopped: once when he walked up to a man kneeling--and he was a
poacher--and did not see him