s bright, fierce eyes detected a tiny hole,
the imperfectly hidden entrance to a mouse-tunnel. He thrust in his head
at once to investigate. It was a close squeeze; but where his head and
neck could go his slender body could follow, and he dearly loved the
exploring of just such narrow passages.

A little way in, the tunnel branched; but the mink made no mistake. The
gallery which he selected to follow ended in a mouse-nest, with the mice
at home. There in the dry, warm, sweet-scented dark there was a brief
tragedy, with shrill squeaks and a rustling struggle. Two mice escaped
the slaughter, but the other three were caught. The invader sucked the
blood of all three while they were warm, ate one, and then curled
himself up for sleep in his new and delightful quarters. This stack was
all that the new range needed to make it the very choicest that a mink
could possess.

[Illustration: "A SNIPE WHICH FLEW TOO LOW OVER THE DITCH."]

After this the mink occupied the stack in bad weather, but ranged the
ditches, as usual, when it was pleasant. The stack was full of
mouse-galleries, and when he wanted a change he hunted mice. But it was
the outdoor, wide-ranging life that best contented him, so the mice were
by no means all driven out. Being a happy-go-lucky tribe, the survivors
continued to occupy their nests in spite of their terrible new
neighbour, trusting that doom would overlook them.

But neither men nor mice nor minks can be prepared against all the
caprices of Nature. That fall, Nature suddenly took it into her head to
try the dykes, of which the men had for a generation or more been so
boastful. She rolled in from the sea a succession of tremendous tides,
backing them up with a mighty and unrelenting wind out of the southwest,
and piled the tide-channels to the brim with buffeting floods. For a
time the dykes withstood the assault valiantly. But again and again,
ever fiercer and fiercer, came the besieging tides; and finally they
made a breach. In rushed a red and foaming torrent, devouring the clay
walls on either side with a roar, and drowning the long-protected
dyke-marsh under a seething chaos of muddy waves and debris.

The first breach occurred at daybreak; and the stack stood right in the
way. The huge flood poured in in angry glory, almost blood-red in the
first gush of a blazing crimson sunrise. In that unnatural and
terrifying light, which swiftly softened to a mocking delicacy of pink
and lilac, the st