e. She skirted the meadows
and the rocks where the hunters had beaten down the gorse and the
brambles near her home; thence she returned to the pool. Hitherto she
had loved the placid night; to her the stillness was significant of
peace. But now that stillness was full of sadness, and weariness, and
monotony. The shadows were deep within the gorge; from the distant woods
the hoot of an owl mocked her loneliness. She heard no glad answering
cry. Still calling, calling, calling, she floated through the shadows,
and out into the moonlight shimmering on the placid water below the
gorge; but she sought and called in vain.

Lutra spent the rest of that year in widowhood. In consequence of her
fight with the terrier, and also because of her grief, her two little
cubs were still-born.

Midsummer came, and the shallows were almost choked with weeds. The
countryside experienced a phenomenal period of drought, and for weeks
the river seemed impure and almost fetid. Night after night, and
steadily travelling westward, Lutra took short cuts across country from
pool to pool. Late in July she reached the estuary of the river; and for
the remaining months of summer fished in the bay, finding there a
pleasant change in her surroundings. Once she was chased by some men in
a boat, who shot at her as she appeared for an instant to breathe. Quick
and watchful, she dived at the flash, and the pellets fell harmlessly
overhead. Again she rose, and again she dived just in time to avoid the
leaden hail. Then she doubled back towards the estuary, and the baffled
sportsmen sailed away across the bay. As autumn came once more she
returned to the river, and fed chiefly on the migrating eels that
swarmed in the hollows near the bank. Presently, by many a nightly
journey, she gained the upper reaches, where she lived, till the
following spring, close to her old home.

The winter was long and severe. In January, the fields were buried in
snow, the roads were as smooth and hard as glass, and the
well-remembered pool beneath the pines was almost covered with a great
sheet of ice. At this time another young dog-otter began to show Lutra
considerable attention. The village children often saw the pairing
otters, for the animals, hard pressed, had perforce to fish by day
instead of by night. All night the trout lay dormant under the stones in
the bed of the river, and only at noon did they rise to the surface on
the lookout for hardy ephemerals that, in a