“He’s hurt,” said Bunny.  “Let me kill him!  Let Chops finish him!”

“No, no, no, no!” Vehemently Toby flung her protest.  “He may be hurt, but he’ll get over it.  Anyway, give him his chance!  There!  He’s moving!  It wouldn’t be fair not to give him his chance.”

“It would be kinder to kill him,” said Bunny.

“I hate you!” she cried back, weeping over Chops who stood strained against her.  “If—­if—­if you touch him—­I’ll never, never speak to you again!”

Bunny came to her, took Chops by the collar, and fastened him with his whip to the gate.  Then he stooped over Toby, his young face sternly set.

“Stop crying!” he said.  “Let me have your hands!”

They were a mass of scratches from the hare’s pounding feet.  He began to look at them, but Toby thrust them behind her back.  She choked back her tears like a boy, and looked up at him with eyes of burning indignation, sitting back on her heels in the long grass.

“Bunny, it’s a damn’ shame to trap a thing like that.  Did you do it?”

“I?  No.  I’m not a poacher.”  Grimly Bunny made reply.  That flare of anger made her somehow beautiful, but he knew if he yielded to the temptation to take her in his arms at that moment she would never forgive him.  “Don’t be unreasonable!” he said.  “You’ll have to come and bathe your hands.  They can’t be left in that state.”

“Oh, what does it matter?” she said impatiently.  “I’ve had much worse things than that to bear.  Bunny, you believe in God I know.  Why does He let things be trapped?  It isn’t fair.  It isn’t right.  It—­it—­it hurts so.”

“Lots of things hurt,” said Bunny.

“Yes, but there’s nothing so mean and so horrible as a trap.  I—­I could kill the man who set it.  I’m glad it wasn’t you.”  Toby spoke passionately.

“So am I,” said Bunny.

He crumpled the wire gin in his hand, and dragged it up from the ground.

Toby watched him still kneeling in the grass.  “What are you going to do with it?”

“Destroy it,” he said promptly.

She smiled at him, the tears still on her cheeks.  “That’s fine of you.  Bunny, I haven’t got a handkerchief.”

He gave her his, still looking grim.  She dried her eyes and got up.  The hare, recovering somewhat, gave her a frightened stare and slipped away into the undergrowth.  She looked up at Bunny.

“I’m sorry I was angry,” she said.  “Are you cross with me?”

He relaxed a little.  “Not particularly.”

“Don’t be!” she said tremulously.  “I couldn’t help it.  He suffered so horribly, and I know—­I know so well what it felt like.”

“How do you know?” said Bunny.

Her look fell before his.  She made an odd movement of shrinking.  He put his arm swiftly round her.

“Never mind the wretched hare!  He’s got away this time anyway.  And I’m not at all sure you didn’t have the worst of it.  Feeling better now?”