“Here!” cried Louis.

“Where?” came the faint voice of Sarah, muffled by layers and layers of hay.

“Right here!” said Louis again.

No papa rabbit could have been prouder than Louis at the cozy, dark burrow he had made in the great mass of haystacks. Even his little sister, who could tunnel better than a mole, needed help to find him through the forks, cross-tunnels, chimneys and hidden trapdoors that led to his newest secret chamber.

Sitting still, he heard first the sound of his own heartbeat, then, far below him, the bleating of June (his favorite ewe) and her twin lambs Philippe and Philippa. Then he heard some nearby scratching and scrabbling, and pop! The skinny dark shape of Sarah entered the burrow.

“Good work, baby rabbit!” said Louis. “Here are some carrots.”

Sarah ate the pretend carrots and snuggled against her big brother. “Tell me a story, Daddy Rabbit,” she said.

He began a story. Then suddenly he cried out: “Fox!”

Like firefighters responding to an alarm, Louis and Sarah rushed out of the burrow. They scrambled through tunnels and trapdoors and up a 15-foot chimney-tunnel to the top of the three-story structure, where they ran wobbling and ducking under roof beams to its perilous edge. There they threw themselves flat on their bellies, their chins sticking over the edge of the structure as they peered past the hayloft to the barn floor far below. Would a fox appear?

To their surprise, the big door opened and in came their mother, wearing flannels, an apron and her rainbow-colored wool hat. She looked straight up at their two gleaming pairs of eyes....

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