ir brook for weeks; and
early morning was the time to surprise him. As they tiptoed out of the
house into the wonderful stillness, the church clock struck five. Dan
took a few steps across the dew-blobbed lawn, and looked at his black
footprints.

'I think we ought to be kind to our poor boots,' he said. 'They'll get
horrid wet.'

It was their first Summer in boots, and they hated them, so they took
them off, and slung them round their necks, and paddled joyfully over
the dripping turf where the shadows lay the wrong way, like evening in
the East.

The sun was well up and warm, but by the brook the last of the night
mist still fumed off the water. They picked up the chain of otter's
footprints on the mud, and followed it from the bank, between the weeds
and the drenched mowing, while the birds shouted with surprise. Then
the track left the brook and became a smear, as though a log had been
dragged along.

They traced it into Three Cows meadow, over the mill-sluice to the
Forge, round Hobden's garden, and then up the slope till it ran out on
the short turf and fern of Pook's Hill, and they heard the
cock-pheasants crowing in the woods behind them.

'No use!' said Dan, questing like a puzzled hound. 'The dew's drying
off, and old Hobden says otters'll travel for miles.'

'I'm sure we've travelled miles.' Una fanned herself with her hat. 'How
still it is! It's going to be a regular roaster.' She looked down the
valley, where no chimney yet smoked.

'Hobden's up!' Dan pointed to the open door of the Forge cottage. 'What
d'you suppose he has for breakfast?'

'One of _them_. He says they eat good all times of the year.' Una jerked
her head at some stately pheasants going down to the brook for a drink.

A few steps farther on a fox broke almost under their bare feet, yapped,
and trotted off.

'Ah, Mus' Reynolds--Mus' Reynolds'--Dan was quoting from old
Hobden,--'if I knowed all you knowed, I'd know something.'[1]

[1] See 'The Winged Hats' in _Puck of Pook's Hill_.

'I say,' Una lowered her voice, 'you know that funny feeling of things
having happened before. I felt it when you said "Mus' Reynolds."'

'So did I,' Dan began. 'What is it?'

They faced each other stammering with excitement.

'Wait a shake! I'll remember in a minute. Wasn't it something about a
fox--last year. Oh, I nearly had it then!' Dan cried.

'Be quiet!' said Una, prancing excitedly. 'There was something happened
before we met the fox la