here
he had been.

"Been?" said the Salmon, "why, down to the sea. We went down with the
first flood after you left us, and merry it was in the glorious salt
water. We met fish from half a dozen other rivers; and the little
fellows that you saw in their silver jackets asked to be remembered to
you, though you would hardly know them now, for they are grown into
big Salmon. But we were obliged to part at last and go back to our
rivers, and hard work it was climbing some of the weirs down below, I
can tell you; indeed, my wife could not get over one of them, and I
was obliged to leave her behind. Ah, there's no place like the sea! Is
there, my little fellow?" he said, looking kindly at the little Calf.

But the Hind was obliged to confess, with some shame, that her Calf
had never seen the sea.

"What! an Exmoor Deer, and never seen the sea?" exclaimed the Salmon;
and though he said no more, both Stag and Hind bethought them that it
was high time for their Calf to see not only the sea, but the moor. So
they bade the Salmon good-bye, and soon after moved out of the valley
to the forest, and over the forest to the heather. And the Stag could
not resist the temptation of going to look for old Bunny, so away they
went to her bury. But when he got there, though he saw other Rabbits,
he could perceive no sign of her; nor was it till he had asked a great
many questions that one of the Rabbits said:

"Oh! you'm speaking of great-grandmother, my lord. She's in to bury,
but she's got terrible old and tejious." And she popped into a hole,
from which after a while old Bunny came out. Her coat was rusty, her
teeth were very brown, and her eyes dim with age; and at first she
hardly seemed to recognise the Stag; but she had not quite lost her
tongue, for after a time she put her head on one side and began.

"Good-day, my lord; surely it was you that my Lady Tawny brought to
see me years agone, when you was but a little tacker. 'Tis few that
comes to see old Bunny now. Ah! she was a sweet lady, my Lady Tawny,
but her's gone. And Lady Ruddy was nighly so sweet, but her's gone.
And the old Greyhen to Badgworthy, she was a good neighbour, but her's
gone; and her poults be gone, leastways they don't never bring no
poults to see me. And my last mate, he was caught in a net. I said to
mun, 'Nets isn't nothing;' I says, 'When you find nets over a bury,
bite a hole in mun and run through mun, as I've a-done many times.'
But he was the half o