th beating hearts to sounds unperceived
by our drowsy senses dulled by long immunity from fear--caused momentary
terror to the water-vole. Each trifling sight and sound contributed to
that invaluable stock of experience from which he would gradually learn
to distinguish without hesitation between friends and foes, and be freed
from the pain of needless anxiety which, to Nature's weaklings, is at
times almost as bitter as death.

Brighteye was fated to meet with an unusual number of adventures, and
consequently to know much of the agony of fear. His russet coat was more
conspicuous than that of his soberly gowned companions, and he was on
several occasions marked for attack when they escaped detection. But he
became the wisest, shyest, most watchful vole along the wooded
river-reach, and in time his neighbours and offspring were so influenced
by his example and training that a strangely furtive kindred, the
wildest of the wild, living in secrecy--their presence revealed to
loitering anglers only by tell-tale footprints on the wet sand when the
torrent dwindled after a flood--seemed to have come to haunt the river
bank between the cottage gardens and the swinging bridge above the pool
where Brighteye dwelt.

Though Brighteye's distinctive appearance attracted the notice of
numerous enemies, his marked individuality was not wholly a misfortune,
since it aroused my kindly interest, and thus caused him to be spared by
the village hunting party.

As he sat in the first shadows of evening among the reeds and the
rushes, the kingfisher and the dipper, by which a few minutes before he
had been startled, flew back from the direction of the village gardens;
and he quickly decided, while watching their flight, that somehow it
must be connected with the dull, but now plainly audible, thud of
approaching footsteps on the meadow-path. The buck "drummed" again, then
the rustling "pat, pat" of the rabbits ceased in the wood, and one by
one the adult voles feeding in the reed-bed slipped silently into the
shallows and disappeared.

Brighteye was loath to relinquish the juicy rush that he held in his
fore-paws, but the signs of danger were insistent. After creeping
through the reeds to the water's edge, he proceeded a little way down
the bank till he came to a spot where the view of the meadow-path was
uninterrupted. His sight was not nearly so keen as his scent and hearing
were, but he discerned, in a blur of dim fields, and rippling