HT." See p. 139 " " 138

"HE RETIRED TO A ROCKY FASTNESS ON THE WILD WEST
COAST." " " 238

"WHEN THE EARLY AUTUMN MOON ROSE OVER THE CORN." " " 290

"HE CLIMBED FROM HIS DOORWAY, AND STOOD MOTIONLESS,
WITH UPLIFTED NOSTRILS, INHALING EACH BREATH
OF SCENT." " " 364

"AS HE MEASURED HIS FULL LENGTH AGAINST THE TREE."
See p. 419 " " 418

THE OTTER.

I.

THE HOLT AMONG THE ALDERS.

I first saw Lutra, the otter-cub, while I was fishing late one summer
night. Slow-moving clouds, breaking into fantastic shapes and spreading
out great, threatening arms into the dark, ascended from the horizon and
sailed northward under the moon and stars. Ever and anon, low down in
the sky, Venus, like a clear-cut diamond suspended from one of its many
twinkling points, glittered between the fringes of the clouds, or the
white moon diffused soft light among the wreathing vapours that twisted
and rolled athwart the heavens. In the shelter of the pines on the
margin of the river, a ringdove, awakened by a bickering mate,
fluttered from bough to bough; and his angry, muffled coo of defiance
marred the stillness of the night. The gurgling call of a moorhen,
mingling with the ripple of the stream over the ford, came from the
reeds at a distant bend of the river. Nearer, the river, with varying
cadence, rose and fell in uneven current over a rocky shelf, and then
came on to murmur around me while I waded towards the edge of a deep,
forbidding pool. In the smooth back-wash beyond the black cup of the
pool a mass of gathered foam gleamed weirdly in the dark; and, further
away, broad tangles of river-weed, dotted with the pale petals of
countless flowers, floated on the shallow trout-reach extending from the
village gardens to the cornfields below the old, grey church.

In one of the terraced gardens behind me a cottager was burning garden
refuse; tongues of flame leaped up amid billows of smoke, and from the
crackling heap a myriad sparks shot out on every side. While the
cottager moved about by the fire, his shadow lengthened across the
river, which, reflecting the lurid glare, became strangely suggestive
of unfathomable depths. The moorhen called again from the reeds near the
ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed