e the spot where she had marked her prey. But she
was too late--the vole had dived. Yet, even while, having alighted on
the boulder, the owl stood baffled by the disappearance of the vole, an
opportunity came, which, had she been poised in the air, could scarcely
have been missed. Close to the near bank a wave rose above the surface
of the eddy as Lutra, having seen the vole dive from the stone, again
hurried in pursuit. So fast was the otter that the momentum carried her
well into the shallows. But for the third time the vole escaped. I
indistinctly saw him scramble out, and run, with a shrill squeak, across
a ridge of sand, offering a second chance to the listening owl; and,
from his flight in the direction of the well known burrow, I concluded
that the hunted creature was russet-coated little Brighteye. But the
bird knew that she could not rise and swoop in time; so, probably
disturbed by the presence of the otter, she flew away down-stream just
as Lutra, since the vole was out of reach, glided from the sand and
philosophically turned her attention to less evasive trout and eels.

Then all was motionless and silent, but for an occasional faint whistle
as Lutra fished in the backwater at the throat of the pool, the wailing
cry of the owl from the garden on the crest of the slope behind me, and
the ceaseless, gentle ripple of the river. At last, when the voices of
the otter and the owl were still, and when the shadows were
foreshortened as the moon gazed coldly down between the branches of the
fir, Brighteye, having recovered from his recent fright, left his
sanctuary by the roots of the willow, and wandered, singing, singing,
down the white, winding run-way and out into the main road of the
riverside people, till he came to a jutting branch above the river's
brim, whence he dived into the placid pool, and swam away towards the
reed-bed. Then the crossed shadows of the flags and hemlocks screened
him from my sight.

The first autumn in the water-vole's life was a season of wonderful
beauty. A few successive frosts chilled the sap in the trees and the
bushes near the river, but were succeeded by a long period when the air
was crisp yet balmy, and not a breath of wind was noticeable except by
the birds and the squirrels high among the giant beeches around the old
garden, and when the murmur of summer insects was never heard by night,
and only by day if a chance drone-fly or humble-bee visited a surviving
clump of yellow