Yet, as the flock scratched, the high-stepping cock would frequently cast up his eye toward the tree-tops; would sound his alarum at the flight of a robin; and if a crow came over, he would shout and dodge and start to run. But instantly the shadow would pass, and instantly Chanticleer--
"He looketh as it were a grym leoun, And on hise toos he rometh up and doun; * * * * * Thus roial as a prince is in an halle."
He wasn't afraid. Cautious, alert, watchful he was, but not afraid. No shadow of dread lay dark and ominous across the sunshine of his pasture. Shadows came--like a flash; and like a flash they vanished away.
We cannot go far into the fields without sighting the hawk and the snake, whose other names are Death. In one form or another Death moves everywhere, down every wood-path and pasture-lane, through the black waters of the mill-pond, out under the open of the April sky, night and day, and every day, the four seasons through.
I have seen the still surface of a pond break suddenly with a swirl, and flash a hundred flecks of silver into the light, as the minnows leap from the jaws of the terrible pike. Then a loud rattle, a streak of blue, a splash at the centre of the swirl, and I see the pike twisting and bending in the beak of the terrible kingfisher. The killer is killed. But at the mouth of the nest-hole in the steep sand-bank, swaying from a root in the edge of the turf above, hangs the terrible black snake, the third killer; and the belted kingfisher, dropping the pike, darts off with a startled cry.
I have been afield at times when one tragedy has followed another in such rapid and continuous succession as to put a whole shining, singing, blossoming springtime under a pall. Everything has seemed to cower, skulk, and hide, to run as if pursued. There was no peace, no stirring of small life, not even in the quiet of the deep pines; for here a hawk would be nesting, or a snake would be sleeping, or I would hear the passing of a fox, see perhaps his keen, hungry face an instant as he halted, winding me.
There is struggle, and pain, and death in the woods, and there is fear also, but the fear does not last long; it does not haunt and follow and terrify; it has no being, no shape, no lair. The shadow of the swiftest scudding cloud is not so fleeting as this Fear-shadow in the woods. The lowest of the animals seem capable of feeling fear; yet the very highest of them seem incapable of dreading it. For them Fear is not of the imagination, but of the sight, and of the passing moment.