ross the
boundary rose a small plantation. Here he determined to seek shelter. He
had but fifty yards to go, and started to glide stealthily from tuft to
tuft.

On all sides the ground was alive with tiny insects. The larger kinds
seemed mostly to be sleeping. He ran full tilt against a drowsy butterfly,
sweeping its close-folded wings through half a circle, as he passed. They
sprang back with a jerk, but the insect itself remained motionless.
Grasshoppers clung to every other grass-stem; their eyes were dead and
staring. Here and there he saw a spider gripping its support and waiting
for the sunrise.

[Illustration: HE TRIED TO PICK UP HIS POSITION.]

Once he found himself confronted by a bloated toad. The amphibian surveyed
him solemnly, but never moved. A low hiss whistled through the grass. He
crouched in terror while four feet of grass-snake undulated by. A
shrewmouse broke cover in front of him, followed by its mate. The air
resounded with shrill defiant squeaks as the two bunchy velvet balls
rolled over one another out of sight.

So he worked his way along towards the boundary; pausing at intervals to
gnaw at the growing plant-stems, or to sit on his haunches and nibble some
fallen seed which took his fancy.

[Illustration: VOLE-LIKE THIS LATTER WAS, YET HE WAS NO ORDINARY VOLE.]

It was close to the plantation that a familiar movement in the grass
seemed to betray the presence of a near relation. Hastening towards it
he found himself confronted by a total stranger. Vole-like this latter
undoubtedly was, yet he was no ordinary vole. Delicate chestnut fur,
brilliant white feet, a whitish waistcoat, and a paste-coloured two-inch
tail proclaimed the red vole at once.

[Illustration: THEY SAT GAZING AT ONE ANOTHER.]

In size there was little to choose between them, and they sat gazing at
each other for some moments stolid and undismayed. Yet, despite the
equality of fighting weight, he felt himself somehow the inferior
creature. His thoughts ran on the old legend of the field-vole who mated
with a wood-mouse of high degree, and whose descendants to this day bear
the marks of their noble origin. So, when the stranger turned and leapt
lightly into the undergrowth that fringed the wood, he humbly tried to
follow.

That was no easy matter, for, where the other jumped, he could only
scramble, and on the flat he felt himself hopelessly outclassed. Still,
once beyond the outskirts of the wood, the tangled thicket