he
pond in the pasture near the wood.

When spring came once more, and the scented primroses gleamed faintly in
the gloom beside the upper entrance to the burrow, and the corncrake,
babbling loudly, wandered through the growing grass at the foot of the
meadow-hedge, the household of the voles was broken up. The young ones
found partners, and, in homes not far from the burrow by the
willow-stoles, settled down to the usual life of the vole, a life of
happiness and yet of peril.

For still another year Brighteye's presence was familiar to me. I often
watched him as he sat at the water's edge above the buttress, or on the
stone in mid-stream, or on the half-submerged root of a tree washed into
an angle of the pool above the stakes, and as, after his usual toilet
observances, he swam thence across the reed-bed opposite the "hover"
where, in autumn, the breeding salmon lurked.

Then, for many months, I lived far from the well loved village. But one
winter evening, after a long journey, I returned. The snow, falling
rapidly, blotted out the prospect of the silent hills. The village
seemed asleep; the shops were closed for the weekly holiday; not a
footfall could be heard, not even a dog could be seen, down the long
vista of the straggling street. The white walls of the cottages, and the
white snow-drifts banked beside the irregular pavements, were in
complete contrast to the radiant summer scene on which my eyes had
lingered when I left the village. My feeling of cheerlessness was not
dispelled even by the warmth and comfort of the little inn. Oppressed by
the evidences of change, which in my disappointment were, no doubt, much
exaggerated, I left the inn, and, heedless of the piercing cold and the
driving snow, made my way towards the river. As I approached the stakes
below the pool, a golden-eye duck rose from beside the bank, and on
whistling wings flew swiftly into the gloom. I crouched in the shelter
of a holly tree, and waited and watched till the cold became
unendurable; but no other sign of life was visible; the pool was
deserted.

In summer I returned home to stay, and then, as of old, I often wandered
by the river. Evening after evening, till long after the last red glow
had faded from the western hill-tops, I lingered by the pool. The owl
sailed slowly past; the goatsucker hawked for moths about the oaks; the
trout rose to the incautious flies; the corncrake babbled loudly in the
long, lush meadow grass. A fam