The hedgehog moved through the night as if he owned it and had no fear of anything on earth; but many, it would seem, had cause to fear him.  He turned and snorted, and snatched up a slug.  Three very quick and suggestive—­quite audible—­scrunches, and it was gone.  He described a half-circle, sniffing very loudly, and chopped up a grub.  He paused for a fraction to nose out a beetle, and disposed of it with the same quick three or four chopping scrunches. (It sounded rather like a child eating toast-crusts.) He continued, always wandering devious, always very busy and ant-like, always snorting loudly; grabbed another beetle, and then a worm—­all by scent, apparently—­and reached the hedge-ditch, where, in the pitch-darkness, he could still be heard snorting and scrunching hapless insects, slugs, and worms at scarcely more than one-minute intervals.  And he never stopped.  He seemed to have been appointed by Nature as a sort of machine, a spiked “tank,” to sniff tirelessly about, reducing the surplus population of pests, as if he were under a curse—­as, indeed, the whole of the great order of little beasts to which he belonged, the Insectivora, are—­which, afflicting him with an insatiable hunger, drove him everlastingly to hunt blindly through the night for gastronomic horrors, and to eat ’em.  Anyway, he did it, and in doing it seemed to make himself worthy of the everlasting thanks and protection of the people who owned that land—­thanks which to date he had never received.

Strange to say, he never stopped of his own free-will, though he was stopped:  once when he walked up to a man kneeling—­and he was a poacher—­and did not see him 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.