ever, he
miraculously twisted and writhed, eel-fashion, and with one mighty
wrench--a good strip of his skin and fur had to go in that pull, but it
couldn't be helped--he had broken the other's hold, leapt clear of the
clinch, and was gone.

The otter was up before you could guess what had happened, and was
drumming away on his heels; but she soon pulled up, realizing that a
polecat may be slow in the books, but not so slow in real life, with
her to assist speed. Anyway, she seemed slower; and, in any case, she
could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of holes and cover he was
sure to take to, like a fish to water. Moreover, she was spitting up
blood, result of friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her
throat, and felt more in need of the egg--which she had won, at any
rate--than a wild-goose chase.

Like a thin, wavy line through the night, friend polecat betook himself
to the sea-bank, to a hole in the sea-bank, to the very depths of that
hole; and there, in the shape of two angrily smoldering, luminous orbs
shining steadily through the pit-like dark, he stayed. Most of the
time, I fancy, he used up in licking his wounds. They needed it, for,
though clean, the punctures from the otter's canines had gone deep, and
a red trail of drops marked the polecat's route to his lair--one of his
lairs.

Not, be it noted, that he was entirely ignored. Blood-trails are
always items of interest in the wild, especially in the dark hours
while man sleeps. Thus there once came to the mouth of the hole
scufflings, and the noise as of an eager, inquisitive crowd--rats, who
hoped for a chance to get their own back on a detested foe. But one
evil snarl from the wounded beast removed them, convinced that the time
was not yet.

Once, also, something sniffed out of the stilly night, and that was a
fox; but one snap from within, a perfectly abominable smell, and the
narrowness of the accommodation proved too much for brer fox, and he,
with an insolent cock of the brush, retired.

Then, too, there was a rabbit, not looking where he was going, who got
half-way down the burrow before he realized the awful truth, and went
out backwards, like a cat with a salmon-tin on its head.

But along towards dawn there came an altogether different sort of
sound, somehow--a sort of a little chuckling sound; and the polecat,
answering it, came out. He looked rather less awful now than when he
had gone in. A form was standing out