he were waiting for
something; which she probably was--a lover.

It was, however, death that came, and he is a too attentive lover. The
battle had been going on some seconds without apparent result, possibly
because the voles had to bite upwards, shark-fashion, owing to the fact
that their fighting-teeth are wedge-shaped incisors, instead of
stabbing fangs, when there was a hrrr! That is all, just like
that--hrrr!

Then there were no voles; but there seemed to have been no going of the
voles, either. They just were, fighting and watching the fight--then
they just were not. Instead of them, on the very spot where they had
been, a sheeted ghost, with wings that flapped and flapped, and never
made any noise, with the face of a cat, and big round eyes that
gleamed, and a snore most horrible, had simply been evolved from
nowhere, and under its claws was the little red-backed lady who waited
for a lover.

Now, the coming of that apparition, whose wings did not say
"Hough-hough!" or "Whew-whew!" like other birds' wings do when they
fly, thus proving itself, or rather herself, to be an owl, and the
fight of Mr. Hedgehog and the poisoned death, had a direct connection
with, and a bearing upon, the little bank-vole's life, although they
may not have seemed to have at first. If the snake had not run amok
against the hedgehog, the latter slow personage would have been well
out in the meadow by that time, reducing the worm population, instead
of hanging about and coming up the ditch at that moment, with the hot
and worried air of one who is late.

What he saw was the owl on the ground, flapping her great, soft wings
about, within a foot of the nicely, neatly, nattily roofed-in nest
where he and his lifelong wedded wife thought they had hidden cunningly
their four soft-bristled, helpless babies. What he thought he saw was
the owl engaged in turning one of those same babies into nourishing
infant owls' food, or "words to that effect." And the hedgehog, like
most of the order Insectivora, is cursed with the temper of Eblis, too.
Naturally, therefore, things happened, and happened the more
hectically, perhaps, because Mrs. Hedgehog chanced at that moment to be
away--attending to the last rites--shall we say?--over the form of an
expiring young rat.

The little pig's eyes of him went red in his funny, bristle-crowned
head, and just as a clockwork toy charges, so he charged, with a quick,
grunting rustle and far greater spee