of a
neighbouring valley. So, when the snows had melted and the rime no
longer touched with fairy fingerprints the tracery of the leafless
boughs, and when Olwen the White-footed had come once more into the
valley called after her name, Lutra forsook the broad river in which she
had spent her early life, and, with her companion and a promising
family, lived contented under the frowning Rock of Gwion, secure in
peace and solitude, at least for a season, from the shaggy
otter-hounds.

THE WATER-VOLE.

I.

OUR VILLAGE HOUNDS.

Not many years ago the pleasures of life among my neighbours here in the
country were simpler and truer than they are to-day. Perhaps in that
bygone time money was more easily made, or daily need was met with
smaller expenditure. It may be, too, that family cares were then less
pressing, or that a prolonged period of general prosperity had been the
privilege of rich and poor alike in this green river-valley around my
home. In those days, to which I often look back with regretful yearning,
everybody seemed to have leisure; the ties of friendship were not
severed by malicious gossip; old and young seemed to realise how good it
was to have pleasant acquaintanceships and to be in the sunshine and the
open air. Fathers played with their children in the street: one winter
morning, when, after a heavy fall of snow and a subsequent frost, the
ground was as slippery as glass, I watched a white-haired shopkeeper,
lying prone on a home-made toboggan, with his feet sprawling behind for
rudder, steer a load of merry youngsters full tilt down a steep lane
behind his house. The sight was so exhilarating that I also forgot I was
not a child; and on the second journey I joined the sportive party, and
came to grief because the shopkeeper kicked too quickly at a turn in the
course and sent me with a double somersault into the ditch.

It happened in those days that in the miscellaneous pack of mongrels our
village sportsmen gathered together when they went rabbit-shooting among
the dense coverts of the hillsides were two exceptionally clever dogs--a
big, shaggy, bobtail kind of animal, and a little, smooth-coated beast
resembling a black-and-tan terrier.

The big dog, Joker, lived at a farm in the village, and, during the
leisure of summer, when rabbiting did not engage his attention, took to
wandering by the river, joining the bathers in their sport and poking
his nose inquisitively under the alder-root