river and disappeared into
the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool.

Casting a white moth quietly over the stream, I noticed beyond the
shadows a round mass rising from the centre of the current, moving
against the flood, and sinking noiselessly out of sight. There could be
no doubt that the shape and motion were those of an otter. To continue
my sport would have been in vain with such a master-fisher in the pool,
so I reeled in my line, and stood still among the ripples as they
circled, muttering, around my knees. Presently the dim form of the otter
reappeared a little further up-stream, and I caught sight of a
glistening trout in the creature's mouth.

The otter swam, with head just above water, towards the alders skirting
the opposite bank, and then, turning sharply, was lost to sight near the
overhanging roots of a sycamore. Immediately afterwards, a strange,
flute-like whistle--as if some animal, having ascended from the depths
of the river, had blown water through its nostrils in a violent effort
to breathe--came from the whirlpool in the dense shadows of the pines:
the otter's mate was hunting in the quiet water beyond the shelf of
rock. Then a slight, rattling sound on the pebbly beach of a little bay
near the sycamore indicated that the animal had landed and was probably
devouring the captured fish. The leaping flames of the cottager's fire
had been succeeded by a fitful glow, but the moon glided from behind the
clouds and revealed a distinct picture of the parent otter standing on
the shingle, in company with Lutra, her little cub.

* * * * *

A deserted mansion--to whose history, like the aged ivy to its crumbling
walls, clung many a fateful legend--nestled under the precipitous woods
in the valley. Time, taking advantage of neglect, had made a wilderness
of the gardens, the lawns, and the orchards, which, less than a century
ago, surrounded with quiet beauty this home of a typical old country
squire. A few garden flowers still lingered near the porch; but the once
well tended borders were overgrown with grass, or occupied with wild
blossoms brought from the fields by the hundred agents employed by
Nature to scatter seed. Owls inhabited the outhouses, and bats the
chinks beneath the eaves. A fox had his "earth" in the shrubbery beyond
the moss-grown pathway leading from the door to the gate at the end of
the drive. A timid wood-pigeon often flew