fore-paws as
he gnawed the firm, succulent flesh about the kernel of the seed. Then,
with a swift patter of tiny feet on the leaf-mould, he ran down to a
rill trickling over a gravelly bed towards the brook, stooped at the
edge of a dark pool in the shadow of a stone, and lapped the cool, clear
water. Thence he made for the edge of the wood, to visit a colony of his
tribe which in spring had migrated from the burrows in the uplands.
Half-way on his journey, he again suddenly crossed the line of the
unknown scent, now mingled with the almost overpowering smell of a
full-grown weasel. The mystery was explained: the strange trail in the
upland meadow had evidently been that of a young "vear" passing by the
hedge to join its parent in the wood.

For a moment the vole stood petrified with terror; then he sank to the
earth, and lay as still as the dead leaves beneath him. But there was no
time to be lost; the "vears" were returning on their trail. In an agony
of fear the mouse turned back towards his home. He ran slowly, for his
limbs almost refused their office of bearing him from danger. Reaching
the mouth of his burrow with great difficulty, he dropped headlong down
a shallow shaft leading to one of the numerous galleries. Then, lo! his
mood immediately changed; his reasoning powers became strong and clear;
his parental instincts whispered that his family, like himself, was in
peril. Squeaking all the while, he raced down one tunnel, then down
another, turned a sharp corner beneath an archway formed by the roots of
a tree that had long ago been felled; and there, in a dry nest of hay
and straw, he found his mate with her helpless little family of six
blind, semi-transparent sucklings only three days old. He heard on every
side the quick scamper of feet as, alarmed by his cries, the voles
inhabiting the side passages of the burrow scurried hither and thither
in wild efforts to remove their young to some imagined place of safety.

[Illustration: "SHE WAS HOLDING ONE OF HER OFFSPRING BY THE NECK, IN
PREPARATION FOR FLIGHT." (_See_ p. 139).]

His mate, like her neighbours, had already taken alarm. At the moment of
his arrival she was holding one of her offspring by the neck, in
preparation for flight. The next instant an ominous hiss reverberated
along the hollow passages; the mother vole, with her suckling, vanished
in the darkness of the winding gallery; and the weasels descended into
the labyrinth of tunnels hollowed out