he dark-plumaged dipper with shining white breast standing
solitary and curtseying on a stone in the middle of the current.
Sometimes a kingfisher would flash by, and occasionally I came upon
a lonely grey heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared,
although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that gives the
river its name. Still it was good to know that he was there, and had his
den somewhere in the steep rocky bank under the rough tangle of ivy and
bramble and roots of overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmer
during my stay, but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter.
Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet coats and
blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds and shouts of excited
people, it had no sooner got half a mile above Ottery St. Mary, where I
had joined the straggling procession, than, falling behind, the hunting
fury died out of me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been
found. The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the dipper
returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image in the stream,
and I to my idle dreaming and watching.

The watching was not wholly in vain, since there were here revealed to
me things, or aspects of things, that were new. A great deal depends on
atmosphere and the angle of vision. For instance, I have often looked
at swans at the hour of sunset, on the water and off it, or flying, and
have frequently had them between me and the level sun, yet never have
I been favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, and the
golden-yellow varieties of that majestic waterfowl, whose natural colour
is white. On the other hand, who ever saw a carrion-crow with crimson
eyes? Yet that was one of the strange things I witnessed on the Otter.

Game is not everywhere strictly preserved in that part of Devon, and the
result is that the crow is not so abhorred and persecuted a fowl as
in many places, especially in the home counties, where the cult of the
sacred bird is almost universal. At one spot on the stream where my
rambles took me on most days a pair of crows invariably greeted my
approach with a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, flying
from tree to tree repeating their angry girdings until I left the place.
Their nest was in a large elm, and after some days I was pleased to see
that the young had been safely brought off. The old birds screamed at me
no more; then I came on one of th