The hedgehog, however, once there, did not seem keen upon unrolling and exposing himself till the badger had gone, which it did finally, vanishing so suddenly and unexpectedly into the dark as almost to seem to have been a ghost.  And after some minutes the hedgehog straightened out, and ate his way—­one can call it nothing else—­to the hedge.  Here he came upon a wounded mouse, complaining into the night in a little, thin voice, because its back was broken, and it could not return to its hole.  It was a harvest mouse, rejoicing in the enormous weight of 4.7 grains and a length of 57 mm., but with as much love of life and fear of death as an elephant.  Heaven knows what had smitten it!  Perhaps it was one of the very few who just escape the owl, or who foil that scientific death, the weasel, at the last moment—­but no matter.  The result was the same—­death, anyway.

The hedgehog saw its eyes shining like stars in a little jet of moonlight, and I fear the hedgehog slew far less adroitly than the owl, and not nearly so scientifically as the weasel; but he slew, none the less, and he did that which he did.

From thence we find our hedgehog, still wandering devious, but with always a direction, just as an ant has, heading his way down-ditch to a farm, and all the way he ate—­beetles mostly, but with slugs and worms thrown in.

Now, those of the wild-folk who approach the farm, even by night, do so with their life in their paws, and most of them know it.  Far, far safer would it be to remain in wood or field-hedge, gorse-patch or growing crop.  Yet they go, like the adventurers of old.

First of all, if he approached by ditch, before getting to the farm proper, the hedgehog knew that he must pass the entrenchments of the rat-folk, and that alone was enough to put off many, for the rat-folk are no longer strictly wild, and, wild or tame, are hated with that cordiality that only fear can impose.  I don’t know that our hedgehog was given to fearing anything very much.  He came of a brave race, and one cursed, moreover, with a vile, quick temper, more than likely to squash in its incipient stage any fear that might threaten to exist; but he did most emphatically detest rats, except to eat them—­a compliment which the rats would have returned, if they had got a chance.

As a matter of fact, it is unlikely that Prickles—­for such was the name of our hedgehog—­would have gone that risky way, traveled so unhealthily far, left his more or less—­mostly less—­safe home wood at all, had it not been that it is sometimes with hedgehogs as it is with men—­in the warm seasons—­their fancy turns to thoughts of love.  Prickles’s fancy had so turned, not lightly, for he was of an ancient and antediluvian race, heavy in thought, but certainly to love.  And love, I want you to realize, in the wild, or anywhere else, for the matter of that, is the very devil.  “Unite and multiply; there is no other law or aim than love,” one great savant despairingly assorts is Nature’s cry, and adds that she mutters to herself under her breath, “and exist afterwards if you can.  That is no concern of mine.”