ght death to the sleeping birds among the branches of the
leafless alders, and when Lutra, ravenous with hunger, chased the great
grey trout from his "hover," but lost him in a crevice near the stakes,
Brighteye, saved from privation by his hoarded provender, seldom
ventured from his home. But if the night was mild and the stars were not
hidden by a cloud of mist, he would steal along his run-way to the main
road of the riverside people, strip the bark from the willow-stoles, and
feed contentedly on the juicy pith; while his friend, the shrew, busy in
the shallows near the reed-bed, searched for salmon-spawn washed from
the "redd" by the turbulent flood, or for newly hatched fry no longer
guarded by the lonely parent fish long since departed on her way to the
distant sea.

The spirit of winter brooded over the river valley. The faint summer
music of the gold-crest in the fir-tops, the sweet, flute-like solo of
the meditative thrush in the darkness of the hawthorn, and the weird,
continuous rattle of the goatsucker perched moveless on an oak-bough
near the river-bend, were no longer heard when at dusk Brighteye left
his burrow and sat, watching and listening, on the little eminence above
the river's brink. Even the drone of the drowsy beetle, swinging over
the ripples of the shadowed stream or from tuft to tuft of grass beside
the woodland path, had ceased. But at times the cheery dipper still sang
from the boulder whence the vole had dived to escape the big brown owl;
and, when other birds had gone to sleep, the robin on the alder-spray
and the wren among the willow-stoles piped their glad vespers to assure
a saddened world that presently the winter's gloom would vanish before
the coming of another spring.

Like a vision of glory, which, in the first hour of some poor wanderer's
sleep, serves but to mock awhile his awakened mind with recollections of
a happy past, so had the Indian summer shone on Nature's tired heart,
and mocked, and passed away. The last red roseleaf had fluttered
silently down; the last purple sloe had fallen from its sapless stem.

A sharp November frost was succeeded by a depressing month of mist and
drizzling rain. Then the heavens opened, and for day after day, and
night after night, their torrents poured down the stony water-courses of
the hills. The river rose beyond the highest mark of summer freshets,
till the low-lying meadow above the village was converted into a lake,
and Brighteye's bur