a
large animal like the otter it offered no landing place. Only at the
stakes, where the dark, cold stream flowed rapidly between two blocks of
ice, could Brighteye enter or leave the river. Partly because, if he
should be pursued, the swiftness of the stream was likely to lessen his
chances of escape, and partly because of a vague but ever-present
apprehension of danger, he avoided this spot. It was fortunate that he
did so; Lutra, knowing well the ways of the riverside people, often
lurked in hiding under the shelf of ice beyond the stakes, and, when she
had gone from sight, the big, gaunt trout came slyly from his refuge by
the boulder and resumed his tireless scrutiny of everything that passed
his "hover." At last a thaw set in, and Brighteye, awakening on the
second day from his noontide sleep, heard the great ice-sheet crack, and
groan, and fall into the river.

When darkness came he hurried to the water's brink, and, almost reckless
with delight, plunged headlong into the pool. He tucked his fore-paws
beneath his chin, and, with quick, free strokes of his hind-legs, dived
deep to the very bottom of the backwater. Thence he made a circle of the
little bay, and, floating up to the arch before his dwelling, sought the
inner entrance, where, however, the ice had not yet melted. He dived
once more, and gained the outer entrance in the front of the buttress,
but there, also, the ice was thick and firm. He breathed the cold, damp
air in the hollow beneath the ice, then glided out and swam to land. The
tiny specks of dirt, which, since the frost kept him from the river, had
matted his glossy fur, seemed now completely washed away, and he felt
delightfully fresh and vigorous as he sat on the grass, and licked and
brushed each hair into place. His toilet completed, he ran gaily up the
bank to his storehouse under the tree, but only to find it empty. Not in
the least disheartened, he climbed the rabbit-track, rustled over the
hedge-bank to the margin of the pond, and there, as in the nights before
the frost, feasted eagerly on duckweed and watercress. On the following
day the ice melted in the shaft below his chamber, and he was thus saved
the trouble of tunnelling a third water-passage--as a ready means of
escape from the otter and the big trout, as well as from a chance weasel
or stoat--which, if the ice had not disappeared, he surely would have
made as soon as his vigour was fully restored.

V.

THE COURAGE OF F