by Brighteye's reed-bed, to devour at leisure a captured trout.

Lutra soon baffled our inexpert hounds, and gained refuge in a "strong
place" well behind a fringe of alder-roots, whence Bob, notwithstanding
his most strenuous efforts, failed to "bolt" her. I then drew off the
hounds, led them towards the throat of the pool, and for a half hour
assisted them to work the "stale drag," till I reached a bend of the
river where Lutra's footprints were still visible on the fine, wet sand
at the brink of a rapid.

Later, when the dogs were quietly resting at their homes, I returned,
alone, to my hiding place not far from Lutra's "holt." As long as
daylight lasted I saw nothing of vole or otter, though several brown
rats, undeterred by the disturbance of the early afternoon, came from
their burrows and ran boldly hither and thither through the arched
pathways of the rank grass by the edge of the bank. The afterglow faded
in the western sky around the old church beyond the village gardens; and
the night, though one by one the stars were lighted overhead, became so
dark that I could see nothing plainly except the white froth, in large
round masses, floating idly down the pool. I waited impatiently for the
moon to rise, for I feared lest the faint, occasional plashes in the
pool indicated that the otter had left her "holt," and would probably be
fishing in a distant pool when an opportunity for observation arrived.

The night was strangely impressive, as it always is to me while I roam
through the woodlands or lie in hiding to watch the creatures that haunt
the gloom-wrapt clearings among the oaks and the beeches. In the
darkness, long intervals, during which nothing will be seen or heard,
must of necessity be spent by the naturalist; and in such intervals the
mind is often filled with what may, perhaps, be best described as the
spiritual influence of night, when the eyes turn upward to the stars or
to the lights of a lone farmstead twinkling through the trees, and
imagination, wondering greatly at its own daring, links time with
eternity, and the destinies of this little world with the affairs of a
limitless universe.

At length the rim of the full moon appeared above the crest of the hill
behind the village, and gradually, as the orb ascended, the night became
brighter, till the whole surface of the pool, except for a fleeting
shadow, was clear and white, and a broad silver bar lay across the
ripples between me and the reed-