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Woundwort, on the other hand, had taken his rabbits into the ditch and then made use of it to get them down to the water meadow, unexposed to further attack from Kehaar.

There was no sound close by, but behind and below them, from the water meadow on the nearer bank of the Test, came faintly the shrill, incessant fussing of a pair of sandpipers.

Along one side of the field, beside the elms, farm tractors had pounded a broad, flat path downhill toward the water meadow below—that same path up which he had run three nights before, after he had left Hazel by the boat.

“Silver,” he said, “I saw a bunch of rabbits—strangers, Efrafans, I suppose—come out of the ditch over there and slip across into the water meadow. They’re behind us now. One of them was the biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen.”

“I warn you, Silver, they’ll be at us before it’s done. There’s thick cover in the water meadow—they’ll use that. Acorn, come back, keep away from that ditch!”