leveret

“C’m’ere, you dreadful little rogue! I’ve got the very thing for you. This is a leveret dagger. All young hares carry one. Here, let’s try it on you for size, young buccaneer, what, what!”

Mrs Terry's husband, Mark, found the leveret while cutting grass and concluded it had been orphaned after finding a dead hare the day before.

It will also eat snakes, and its fondness for eggs has caused it to meet with the enmity of game-preservers; and there is no doubt it occasionally attacks leverets and game-chicks.

But we’ve had rare sport enough, fishing in river and fishing in lake, and shooting almost whatever we came across—rabbits, leverets, pigeons, plovers, anything.”

The gamekeepers said that Joe was a noted thief, and that he caught their birds and their leverets also, and that they would shoot him on sight.