Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

Furze, wandering through the wet green tops of a field of mangels, saw from the Ridge her flag afloat. He had a gun over his shoulder, and as he paused to look at the little slanting pennon of smoke the wind made a hollow murmuring in the barrels of the gun. A wet sun splashed pale light upon the glossy leaves of the mangels. The Six Firs stood up straight and blue, and the smoke from the distant chimney was of the same blueness.

-"Another picnic," he thought with the cynicism of a wilful man, and ploughing on through the mangels, he fired at a bolting rabbit close to the hedge and saw its white scut roll over. The sound of the gun disturbed the heavy melancholy of the valley, and all that wet September greenness. The rabbit still twitched. Its pug was bloody, but Furze did not notice that blood. With the blade of a knife he slit one hind leg, slipped the other leg through the sinews, and slung the rabbit over his gun. The brown body dangled behind his back, and dripped blood upon his old coat.