across from the pines and
walked about the steps before the long-closed door. Near the warped
window of the dismantled gun-room the end of a large water-pipe formed a
convenient burrow for some of the rabbits that played at dusk near the
margin of the shrubbery. This water-pipe led to the river's brink; and
there, having been broken by landslips resulting from the ingress of the
stream during flood, one of the severed parts of the tube formed,
beneath the surface of the water, an outlet to a natural chamber high
and dry in the bank. The upper portion of the pipe was choked with
earth and leaves washed down from the fields by the winter rains.

In this hollow "oven," on a heap of hay, moss, and leaves, brought
hither by the parent otters through an opening they had tunnelled into
the meadow, Lutra was born. Her nursery was shared by two other cubs.
Blind, helpless, murmuring little balls of fur, they were tended
lovingly by the dam.

Soon the thin membrane between their eyelids dried and parted, and they
awoke to a keen interest in their surroundings. Their chamber was dimly
lit by the hole above; and the cubs, directly they were able to crawl,
feebly climbed to a recess behind the shaft, where they blinked at the
clouds that sailed beneath the dome of June, and at the stars that
peeped out when night drew on, or watched the limpid water as, flowing
past the end of the pipe below, it bore along a twirling leaf or rolled
a pebble down the river-bed. Occasionally a salmon-pink wandered across
from the shallows; for a moment or two the play of its tiny fins was
seen at the edge of the pipe; and the cubs, excited by a sight of their
future prey, stretched their necks and knowingly held their heads
askew, so that no movement of the fish might escape their observation.

Among flesh-eating mammals of many kinds, the females display signs of
intelligence earlier than the males. Lutra being the only female among
the cubs, she naturally grew to be the most keenly observant, and often
identified the finny visitor before her brothers ventured to decide that
it was not a moving twig.

The dam spent most of the day asleep in the "holt," and most of the
night fishing in the pools. Inheriting the disposition of their kind,
the cubs also were more particularly lively by night than by day.
Directly the cold dew-mist wreathed the grass at the entrance of the
burrow, they commenced to sport and play, tumbling over each other,
grunting a