When, followed by a few stragglers, these had passed and gathered themselves in the red shadow beneath the gateway towers waiting for the summons, an unusual thing occurred.  For a few moments the Road was left quite empty.  After that last great stroke Death seemed to be resting on his laurels.  When thus unpeopled it looked a very vast place like to a huge arched causeway, bordered on either side by blackness, but itself gleaming with a curious phosphorescence such as once or twice I have seen in the waters of a summer sea at night.

Presently in the very centre of this illuminated desolation, whilst it was as yet far away, something caught my eye, something so strange to the place, so utterly unfamiliar that I watched it earnestly, wondering what it might be.  Nearer and nearer it came, with curious, uncertain hops; yes, a little brown object that hopped.

“Well,” I said to myself, “if I were not where I am I should say that yonder thing was a hare.  Only what would a hare be doing on the Great White Road?  How could a hare tread the pathway of eternal souls?  I must be mistaken.”

So I reflected whilst still the thing hopped on, until I became certain that either I suffered from delusions, or that it was a hare; indeed a particularly fine hare, much such a one as a friend of my old landlady, Mrs. Smithers, had once sent her as a Christmas present from Norfolk, which hare I ate.

A few more hops brought it opposite to my post of observation.  Here it halted as though it seemed to see me.  At any rate it sat up in the alert fashion that hares have, its forepaws hanging absurdly in front of it, with one ear, on which there was a grey blotch, cocked and one dragging, and sniffed with its funny little nostrils.  Then it began to talk to me.  I do not mean that it really talked, but the thoughts which were in its mind were flashed on to my mind so that I understood perfectly, yes, and could answer them in the same fashion.  It said, or thought, thus:—­

“You are real.  You are a man who yet lives beneath the sun, though how you came here I do not know.  I hate men, all hares do, for men are cruel to them.  Still it is a comfort in this strange place to see something one has seen before and to be able to talk even to a man, which I could never do until the change came, the dreadful change—­I mean because of the way of it,” and it seemed to shiver.  “May I ask you some questions?”

“Certainly,” I said or rather thought back.

“You are sure that they won’t make you angry so that you hurt me?”

“I can’t hurt you, even if I wished to do so.  You are not a hare any longer, if you ever were one, but only the shadow of a hare.”

“Ah!  I thought as much, and that’s a good thing anyhow.  Tell me, Man, have you ever been torn to pieces by dogs?”

“Good gracious! no.”

“Or coursed, or hunted, or caught in a trap, or shot all over your back, or twisted up in nets and choked in snares?  Or have you swum out to sea to die more easily, or seen your mate and mother and father killed?”