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And in a minute or two the mouse's brave struggles grew more feeble. All this, however, the lashing and the wriggling and the jumping, had not gone on without much disturbance to the grass-tops.
Save for the droning bees and flies there seemed to be but one live creature astir between the grass and the blue. A solitary marsh-hawk, far over by the rail fence, was winnowing slowly, slowly hither and thither, lazily hunting. All this was in the world above the grass-tops.
Its iron-toothed rack caught the new-mown hay, tossed it and scattered it on the field. Beside the long glistening swaths the cut edge of the hay stood up clean and solid as a wall. Above it the raised plane of the grass-tops, brushed by the wind, quivered and swayed, whitish green, greenish white, in a long shimmering undulation.
As Puss was busily feeding in the dewy clover, she heard the quick, continuous gallop of a dog. This time, however, she had not to deal with Juno, the setter, but with a trained lurcher, borrowed for the occasion from a keeper who had captured the animal during a poaching affray. The leveret, peeping over the grass-tops, saw the dog coming rapidly on. He was over and past her in an instant.
The grass-tops above this play rocked and rustled in a way that would certainly have attracted attention had there been any eyes to see. But the marsh-hawk was still hunting lazily at the other side of the field, and no tragedy followed the childishness.
But below the grass-tops was a very different world, a dense, tangled world of dim green shade, shot with piercing shafts of sun, and populous with small, furtive life. Here, among the brown and white roots, the crowded green stems and the mottled stalks, the little earth kindreds went busily about their affairs and their desires, giving scant thought to the aerial world above them.
"Why not?" demanded Grôm, his eyes still fixed upon the monsters. "Oh! The bees! The terrible bees!" whispered A-ya. "Where can we go?" Grôm turned his head and scanned the belt of woodland, his ears now suddenly comprehending a deep, humming sound which he had hitherto referred solely to the winged foragers in the grass-tops.
The meadow was a sea of sun mysteriously imprisoned in the green meshes of the grass-tops. At wide intervals arose some lonely alder bushes, thick banked with clematis. Far off, on the slope of a low, bordering hill, the red doors of a barn glowed ruby-like in the transfiguring sun. At times, though seldom, a blue heron winged over the level.
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