leeping
flocks; and the collie, a beautiful creature whose character had
hitherto been held above reproach, was shot almost in the act of closing
on a sheep he had already wounded, close to the corner of a field where
a shepherd lay in hiding.

The farmer and his boy were chaffed so unmercifully--for this story of
the badger was now considered a myth--that they grew to hate the very
name of "earth-pig," and to believe that after all they must have chased
through the wood some incarnation of Satan.

V.

HILLSIDE TRAILS.

Several times during his search for a mate, Brock struck the trail of a
female badger, and followed its windings through the thickets and away
across the open fields towards the distant valley, only, however, to
lose it near some swollen brook or on some well trodden sheep-path. The
female had evidently come to a little copse on the crest of a rugged
hill overlooking the river, and, after skirting a pond where wild duck
sheltered among the flags, had retraced her steps. Brock's most
frequented tracks led close to the spot where the stranger's return
trail joined the other near an opening from an almost impenetrable
gorse-cover into a marshy fallow. There, late one night, he found, as he
crossed the opening, that the female badger had travelled forward, but
had not yet returned. Revisiting the spot some minutes afterwards, he
discovered that the backward "drag" was strong on the damp grass. He
followed it quickly, and, in a stubble beyond the gorse, came up at last
with the object of his oft-disappointed quest. She was a widow badger,
older and more experienced than Brock, but smaller and of lighter build.

Perhaps because she wished to test the loyalty of her new lover, and to
find whether he would fight for her possession with any intruder, she
resisted his advances, and refused to go with him to his home. So he
followed her far away to her own snug dwelling on the fringe of the
moorlands. Thence, with the first streak of dawn in the south-eastern
sky, he hurried back to his lair.

Early next evening, Brock went forth to meet his lady-love; and
throughout the long night and for nights afterwards he wandered at her
side, till, concluding that no other suitor was likely to appear, she
accompanied him to his home, and entered on the season's house-keeping
in the central chamber of the great "set" where he had been born. There
they lived happily, and without the slightest annoyance from the o