ong, deep breath, and commenced to dig away the
soil from the mouth of the hole. Suddenly changing his mind--perhaps
because the scent was faint and he concluded that his labour would not
be sufficiently repaid--he ceased his exertions and wandered off towards
the hedge. Next day a carrion crow, seeing the heap of earth that lay
around the hole, and shrewdly guessing it to mean a treat in store, flew
down from an oak-tree, and hopped sideways towards the spot. He peered
inquisitively at the opening, waddled over to another entrance,
returned, and listened eagerly. Convinced that a sound of breathing came
from midway between the two holes he had examined, he moved towards the
spot directly above the nest, tapped it sharply with his beak, and again
returned to listen near the entrance. But all his artifice was quite in
vain; the voles would not bolt; they were not even inquisitive; so
presently, baffled in his hopes of plunder, he moved clumsily away,
stooped for an instant, and lifted himself on slow, sable pinions into
the air.

The mother vole, assisted in questionable fashion by meddlesome Kweek,
spent several hours of the following night in repairing the damage done
by the fox. She drew most of the soil back into the shaft, and then,
where it accumulated in the passage beneath, made the opening towards
the inner chamber slightly narrower than before. Soon, moistened and
hardened by the constant "traffic" of tiny feet nearly always damp with
dew, the mound of earth formed a barrier so artfully contrived that even
a weasel might find it difficult to enter the gallery from the bottom of
the shaft.

III.

A BARREN HILLSIDE.

Living a secluded life in the pasture with his little mate, Kweek
escaped the close attention paid by the "vermin" to his kindred in the
colony beyond the wood. The brown owl still remembered where he dwelt,
but, loath to make a special nightly journey to the spot, seldom caused
him the least anxiety. She seemed to content herself with a strict watch
over the bank inhabited by the red voles, and over the fields on the far
side of the copse, where the grey voles, notwithstanding that they
supplied her with many a delicious supper, were becoming numerous. She
awaited an almost certain increase among the "small deer" of the
pasture, before commencing her raids on the grey voles there. As events
proved, however, her patience was unrewarded.

Kweek's first experience in rearing a family ende