Just beside the gate he found a bread crust which was lovely, and there might be more, mightn’t there?  There wasn’t a person in sight, or a dog.  Johnny went a little farther in and found a pile of cabbage leaves—­a pile of them, mind you—­he really didn’t know what to think of his mother—­she certainly was the limit!  Johnny grew bolder; a little farther on he found more bread crumbs and some stray lettuce leaves—­he began to feel a little sorry for his mother—­lettuce leaves, cabbage leaves and bread crumbs—­and she had said, “Don’t go in there, Johnny, whatever you do!”

The band was playing, and there were flags in the air, but Johnny didn’t notice it.  He didn’t know, of course, that the final lacrosse match of the season was going to be played that afternoon.  Johnny had just gone into one of the cattle sheds to see what was there, when a little boy, with flopped-out ears and a Cow Brand Soda cap on, stealthily closed the gate.  Johnny didn’t know he had on a Cow Brand Soda cap, and he didn’t know that the gate was shut, but he did know that that kind of a yell meant business.  He wasn’t afraid.  Pshaw!  He’d give young Mr. Flop-Ears a run for his money.  Come on, kid—­r-r-r-r-r!  Johnny ran straight to the gate with a rabbit’s unerring instinct, and hurled himself against it in vain.  The flop-eared boy screamed with laughter.  Then there were more Boys.  And Dogs.  All screaming.  The primitive savage in them was awake now.  Here was a wild thing who defied them, with all his speed.  Johnny was running now with his ears laid back, mad with terror, dogs barking, boys screaming, even men joining in the chase, for the lust for blood was on them.  Again Johnny made the circuit of the field—­the noise grew—­a hundred voices, it seemed, not one that was friendly.  It was one little throbbing rabbit against the field, with all the odds against him, running for his life, and losing!  “Sic him, Togo!  Sic him, Collie!  Gee!  Can’t he run?  But we’ve got him this time.  He’ll soon slow up.”  A dog snapped at him and his hind leg grew heavy.  Some one struck at him with a lacrosse stick, and then—­

He found himself running alone.  Behind him a dog yelped with pain, and above the noise someone shouted:  “Here, you kids, let up on that!  Shame on you!  Let him alone!  Call off your dogs, there!  Poor little duffer, let him go.  Get back there, Twin!”

Johnny ran dazed and dizzy, and once more made the circuit and dashed again for the gate.  But this time the gate was open, and Johnny was free!  Saved, and by whom?

Well, of course, old Mrs. Rabbit didn’t believe a word of it when Johnny went home and told her who called off the dogs and opened the gate for him.  She said,—­well, she talked very plainly to Johnny, but he stuck to it, that he owed his life to one of the Bad Men who wear clothes the color of grass, and whose gun spits fire and death.  For old Mrs. Rabbit made just the same mistake that many people make of thinking that a man that hunts must be cruel, forgetting that the true sportsman loves the wild things he makes war on, and though he kills them, he does it fairly and openly.