dly different from
his fellows: he was almost as noisy as a shrew in the dead leaves of a
tangled hedgerow, and his voice was like a shrew's, high-pitched and
continuous, but louder, so that I could hear him at some distance from
his favourite resort in the reeds and the rushes by the willows. He
seemed to be always talking to himself or to the flowers and the river
as he wandered to and fro in search of tit-bits; always debating with
himself as to the chances of finding a tempting delicacy; always
querulous of danger from some ravenous tyrant that might surprise him in
his burrow, or pounce on him unawares from the evening sky, or rise,
swift, relentless, eager, from the depths beneath him as he swam across
the pool.

When I got to know him well, my favourite method, in learning of his
ways, was to lie in wait at a spot commanding a view of one or other of
the narrow lanes joining the main road of the riverside folk, and there,
my face hidden by a convenient screen of interlacing grass-stems, to
listen intently for his approach. Generally, for five minutes or so
before he chose to reach my hiding place, I could hear his shrill
piping, now faint and intercepted by a mound, or indistinct and mingled
with the swirl of the water around the stakes, then full and clear as he
gained the summit of a stone or ridge and came down the winding path
towards me. Though in his talkative moments Brighteye usually reminded
me of the tiny shrew, there were times when he reminded me more forcibly
of an eccentric mouse that, a few years before, had taken up her
quarters in the wall of my study, and each night, for more than a week,
when the children's hour was over and I sat in silence by my shaded
lamp, had made her presence known by a bird-like solo interrupted only
when the singer stayed to pick up a crumb on her way across the room.

The times when Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and
main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest
sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous,
gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and
twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek
young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek
a mate, and he ceased practising his solos before the first winter set
in and the morning sun glanced between leafless trees on a dark flood
swirling over the reed-bed where in summer was