could find nothing to
feed upon but two hawthorn-berries, dropped by the wasteful fieldfares;
but they drank, _and_ cleaned, and proceeded up-stream, with that
caution one only learns in a world full of enemies and empty of friends.

Another six hours of this cold on an empty stomach would send them into
that sleep--the dread, drugged slumber of the cold--from which there is
no awakening in this world, and they seemed to know it. They were
desperate, and their eyes burnt in their sharp heads like gimlet-holes
of light. Desperate they were, as the poor, little, brilliantly
resplendent, and tropic-looking kingfisher had, no doubt, been, whom
they found, frozen into a dried, huddled heap, under the stream-bank,
and so emaciated that, after they had picked his bones, they scarcely
knew that they had touched him.

But anon the face of the snow changed--meaningly for them. Whereas
before they had been alone, almost, in a frozen world, scarcely
crossing a trail but the quadruple track of water-voles or the
chain-pattern impression of a moorhen--nor had seen a living thing but
the square-ended, squat, little, black form of a water-vole out upon an
alder-branch, gnawing bark--they now began to be aware of gradually
increasing company. Not that the company advertised itself, mark you.
Being wild company, it would not; but they knew it was there.

The chain-trail of the moorhen reduplicated itself. It was joined by
that of a water-rail--they saw his ruby eyes and rat-like form in
passing. The fourfold track of a rabbit led the way ahead of them, as
if pointing the path, to be joined by the broken footprints of another
rabbit, and then by the track made by the longer leap of a hare,
fourfold also. The delicate lined marks left by a wood-mouse now kept
company with the others, and anon the little fairy imprints of two
field-voles--short-tailed field-mice, if you prefer. They crossed the
track of another rabbit going, at right-angles, down to the water to
drink, and then the little, busy tattoo of bank-voles. Another hare's
trail, and more rabbits' tracks, began to meander about, but all
heading more or less one way--the way they were going. And then they
stopped dead at the smudged groove and ancient and fish-like scent of
an otter. Moreover, they had scarcely got over that than they came
upon the dog-like tracks, and the smell, like nothing else, of Reynard,
the fox; and, with nerves fairly tingling now, and eyes every