ER-BANK.

The first faint shadows of dusk were creeping over the river when
Brighteye, awakened by a movement on the part of his mother, stole from
his burrow into the tall grass at the edge of the gravel-bank by the
pool. His home was situated in a picturesque spot between the river and
a woodland path skirting the base of a cliff-like ascent clothed with
giant beeches and an under-garment of ferns and whinberry bushes. Alders
and willows grew along the gravel-bank, and through the moss-tangles
among the roots many a twisting, close-hidden run-way led upwards to
what might be called a main thoroughfare, in and out of the
grass-fringes and the ivy, above high-water mark. This road, extending
from the far-off tidal estuary to the river's source in the wild
mountains to the north, communicated with all the dwellings of the
riverside people, and had been kept clear for hundreds of years by
wandering voles and water-shrews, moorhens, water-rails, and coots, and,
in recent days, by those unwelcome invaders, the brown rats. Here and
there it merged into the wider trail of the otter. Sometimes, near a
hedge, it was joined by the track of rabbits, bank-voles, field-voles,
weasels, and stoats, and sometimes, where brooks and rills trickled over
the stones on their way to the river, by other main roads that had
followed the smaller water-courses from the crests of the hills.

Brighteye's home might be likened to a cottage nestling among trees at
the end of an embowered lane well removed from busy traffic; it
contained four or five chambers wherein the members of his family dwelt;
and to Brighteye the tall reeds and the bramble thickets were as large
as shrubs and trees are to human beings. And, like a sequestered
cottager, he knew but little about the great road stretching, up-stream
and down-stream, away from his haunts; he was content with his
particular domain--the pool, the shallows beyond, a hundred yards of
intersected lanes, and the wide main road above the pool and the
shallows.

For a time Brighteye sat at the edge of the stream, alert for any sign
of danger that might threaten his harmless existence. Then playfully he
dropped into the pool, dived, sought the water-entrance to his house,
climbed inside his sleeping chamber, and thence to the bank, where again
he sat intently listening as he sniffed the cool evening air. A
quick-eyed heron was standing motionless in a tranquil backwater thirty
yards up-stream; the sc