r end of our village, the valley is joined by a deep ravine
through which a sequestered road--hidden by hawthorn hedges, and crossed
by numerous water-courses where the hillside streams, dropping from
rocks of shale, ripple towards a trout-brook feeding the main
river--winds into the quiet country. The rugged sides of the ravine are
thickly clothed with gorse and brambles, and dotted with hazels,
willows, and oaks. This dense cover is inhabited by large numbers of
rabbits; in a sheltered hollow half-way up the slope a badger has dug
his "set"; and in the pastures above the thickets a fox may be seen
prowling on almost any moonlit night. Past the gorge, the glen opens out
in rich, level pastures and meadows bounded on either side by the
hills. The nearest farmsteads are built high among the sunny dingles
overlooking the glen, and the corn and the root-crops are grown on the
slope beyond the broad belts of gorse and bramble.

In winter, the low-lying lands are seldom visited by the peasantry,
except when the dairymaid drives the cattle to and fro, or the hedger
trims the undergrowth along the ditches. Though the sportsman with gun
and spaniels and the huntsman with horse and hounds are frequently heard
in the thickets, they never visit the "bottom," unless the partridges
fly down from the stubble, or the hare, pursued by the beagles, takes a
straight line from the far side of the glen to a sheep-path leading up
the gorge. And in summer, except when the fisherman wanders by the
brook, and the haymakers are busy in the grass, the glen is an
undisturbed sanctuary, given over to Nature's wildlings, where, in
safety, as far as man is concerned, they tend their hidden young.

In this quiet, windless place, on the day when first the haymakers came
to the meadows, five little hedgehogs were born in a nest among the
roots of a tree, deep in the undergrowth of a tangled hedgerow. The
nest was made of dry grass and leaves, and with an entrance so arranged
amid the "trash," that, when the parent hedgehogs went to or from their
home, they pushed their way through a heap of dead herbage, which,
falling behind them, hid the passage from inquisitive eyes.

It may be asked why such a warm retreat was necessary, inasmuch as the
hedgehog sucklings came into the world in the hottest time of the year.
Nature's reasons were, however, all-sufficient; the little creatures,
feeble and blind, needed a secure hiding place, screened from the
chang