It would be idle to pretend that Hob liked his work in its new form, but to his credit be it said that he never sulked.
Perhaps the discomfort of his surroundings decidedHob to make his escape from them.
Some week or ten days before Hob was born, the room in the hutch where his mother slept was carefully cleaned, supplied with a new hay bed, and closed.
It chanced at the time that two of the younger sons of the house, only lately promoted to the unrestricted use of 28-bore guns, decided to go ferreting, and took Hob with them.
Of these matters Hob knew nothing; he was following his quarry more slowly, and by the mouth of the hole he put up another rabbit that bolted down the bank before he could reach it.
Thereupon he opened the part of the hutch that had been closed down so long, cleaned it thoroughly, and put in a fresh bed, so that Hob and his brethren returned to a clean home and proceeded to live their life in earnest.
The boy took him home to his father's cottage, found a sack, and having put some straw into it, threw Hob in after, and tramped over to the keeper.
From time to time Hob ran with the jill-ferrets in the clearing round the hutches, and he was the father of several fine litters, but was probably unaware of the fact, for he was totally devoid of domestic instincts.
But for all that a price was put upon his head, Hob was not destined to be secured until he had spent two or three weeks at large, and had grown as fat as the aldermen of the comic press.
He made an effort to pick the ferret up, but being unskilled, forgot to use the dead rabbit that chanced to lie beyond the net as a lure, and instead of seizing Hob with a firm, steady grasp, snatched at him nervously.
By the time summer and autumn had passed and the thick growths had died down from the hedgerows, leaving the burrows plainly to be seen, Hob was as reliable a ferret as ever bolted rabbit.
Though he did not know it, Hob had earned golden opinions already; he had shown all the instincts of the polecat, of which fierce animal a ferret is no more than a domesticated species.
Winter brought Hob his first experience of any note, and gave him his first intimate knowledge of wild life.
