till, if I may so put it, the man coughed,
when he ran like winkle into the hedge, and promptly became a ball for
ten minutes; and once when he came upon a low, long, sinister, big, and
grunting shadow, which again, if I be allowed the term, he did not see,
though quite close, till he heard it grunt, when he instantly jerked
himself into a ball on the spot and in the open. In both cases it
seemed, on the face of it, more as if he had scented, rather than had
either seen or heard, the dangers, and in both cases he had come within
two yards of them--though they were not hidden--before scenting,
seeing, or hearing them, whichever he did do.

Now, books and men have said that friend hedgehog fears only two
things: gypsies and badgers--who eat him. I should not be surprised at
anything the "gyp" did; nor, to this day, can we stake much on our
knowledge of the secret badger; but this badger, at any rate, seemed to
know nothing of books and men. He was delving for roots when the
hedgehog cast up out of the night and jumped him to "attention" by his
loud sniffs--much like a big dog's, I said. Thereafter, however, when
our prickly friend was represented as a ball only, and was as silent as
the grave, the badger took no further notice of him, beyond keeping one
eye--the weather eye--upon him, and treating him to a low growl, or
curse, truly, from time to time.

The hedgehog, however, once there, did not seem keen upon unrolling and
exposing himself till the badger had gone, which it did finally,
vanishing so suddenly and unexpectedly into the dark as almost to seem
to have been a ghost. And after some minutes the hedgehog straightened
out, and ate his way--one can call it nothing else--to the hedge. Here
he came upon a wounded mouse, complaining into the night in a little,
thin voice, because its back was broken, and it could not return to its
hole. It was a harvest mouse, rejoicing in the enormous weight of 4.7
grains and a length of 57 mm., but with as much love of life and fear
of death as an elephant. Heaven knows what had smitten it! Perhaps it
was one of the very few who just escape the owl, or who foil that
scientific death, the weasel, at the last moment--but no matter. The
result was the same--death, anyway.

The hedgehog saw its eyes shining like stars in a little jet of
moonlight, and I fear the hedgehog slew far less adroitly than the owl,
and not nearly so scientifically as the weasel; but he slew, none