ragweed by the run-way close to Brighteye's burrow. The
elms and the sycamores glowed with purple and bronze, the ash-trees and
the willows paled to lemon yellow, the oaks arrayed themselves in rich
and glossy olive green; while the beeches in the glade, and the brambles
along the outskirts of the thickets, ruddy and golden and glittering in
the brief, delicious autumn days, seemed to filter and yet stain the
mellow sunshine, and to fill each nook with liquid shadow as pure and
glorious as the blue and amber lights on the undulating hills. Spread on
the bosom of the brimming river, and broken, here and there, by creamy
lines of passing foam, the reflections of this beauty seemed to well and
bubble, from unfathomable deeps, around the "sly, fat fishes sailing,
watching all."

The water became much colder than in summer; but Brighteye, protected by
a warm covering of thick, soft fur through which the moisture could not
penetrate, as well as by an over-garment of longer, coarser hair from
which the drops were easily shaken when he left the stream, hardly
noticed the change of temperature. But he well knew there were changes
in the surroundings of his home. The flags in the reed-bed were not so
succulent as they had been in early summer; the branches that sometimes
guided him as he swam from place to place seemed strangely bare and
grey; the clump of may-weed that, growing near his burrow, had served as
a beacon in the gloom, was faded to a few short brown tufts; and
nightly in his wanderings he was startled by the withered leaves that,
like fluttering birds, descended near him on the littered run-ways or on
the glassy surface of the river-reach. It was long before he became
accustomed to the falling of the leaves, and up to the time when every
bough was bare the rustling flight of a great chestnut plume towards him
never failed to rouse the fear first wakened by the owl, and to send him
on a long, breathless dive to the bottom of the pool.

Brighteye was a familiar figure to all the river-folk, while he, in
turn, knew most of them, and had learned to distinguish between friends
and foes. But occasionally he made a slight mistake. Though shy, he was
as curious as the squirrel that, one afternoon when Brighteye was early
abroad, hopped down the run-way to make his acquaintance, and frightened
him into a precipitate retreat, then ran out to a branch above the
stream and loudly derided the creature apparently drowning in the