s as much as possible, and pursued by a running fire of abuse
from the sedge and marsh and grasshopper warblers, from wagtails,
meadow-pipits, reed-buntings, larks, and all the small-bird population
of those parts, till he came to the sea-bank, called by the natives
"sea-wall." This was a high, grass-bearded bank designed to constrain
the waters of the estuary, and there, in a hole, curtained by a
dandelion and guarded by the stiff spears of the coarse marram grass,
he stuffed his victim.

The burrow was not empty when he came to it, for it already contained
two moorhens' eggs; but there was still room for more, and one by one
he fetched the remainder of his victims, mother and all, that way, and
stuffed them into the burrow, with a plodding, steady, exact doggedness
of purpose that was rather surprising in a mere wild beast who, if seen
casually, would have appeared to the ordinary man to be merely
aimlessly wandering about the landscape. And, mind you, this was not
quite such a simple and "soft" job as it looked. Grit was needed to
accomplish it, even.

There was, for instance, the sudden, far too suggestive, swirl in the
water as he crossed the dike for the third time, loaded, that gave more
than a hint of some unknown--and therefore the more sinister--haunter
of those muddied depths of pollution, who took a more than passing
interest in the smell of blood, and must, to judge by the swirl, have
been too big to be safe. And that was probably a giant female eel, as
dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size--though he ate eels--might
care to face. Then there was the marsh-harrier--and the same might
have been a kind of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk--who flapped up
like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only waiting--he felt
sure of it--for the polecat to slip, or meet a foe, or have an
accident, or something, before breaking its own avine neutrality.
Then, too, there was the stoat, or, rather, not the stoat only, but the
stoat and his wife, who would have murdered him if they had dared, and
took to shadowing and watching him from cover in the most meaning sort
of way. And, finally, there was the lean, nosing, sneaking dog, the
egg-thief, who had no business there with his yolk-spattered,
slobbering jaws, plundering the homes of the wild feathered ones--he
who was only a tame slave, and a bad one at that. But the dog followed
the polecat into a jungle-like reed fastness, and--almost never came
out aga