the squirrel in the wood and the vole in the
burrow beneath the moss. Occasionally, it is true, when at noon the sun
was bright and spring seemed to have come to the Valley of Olwen, the
snake would stir in his retreat beneath the leaves, the bee would crawl
to and fro in her hidden nest, the flower would feel the stir of rising
sap, the squirrel would venture forth to stretch cramped limbs by a
visit to some particular storehouse--the existence of which, as one
among many filled with nuts and acorns, he happened to remember--and the
vole would creep to the entrance of his burrow, and sit in the welcome
warmth till the sun declined and hunger sent him to his granary for a
hearty meal. These brief, spring-like hours, when the golden furze
blossomed in the hedge-bank near the field-vole's home, and the lark,
exultant, rose from the barren stubble, were, however, full of danger to
Kweek if he but dared to lift his head above the opening of his burrow.

On the outskirts of the wood, in a rough, ivy-grown ridge where, years
ago, some trees had been felled, a flourishing colony of
bank-voles--little creatures nearly akin, and almost similar in shape
and size, to the field-voles--dwelt among the roots and the undergrowth.
These bank-voles, probably because they lived in a sheltered place
screened from the bitter wind by a wall of gorse and pines, moved abroad
in the winter days far more frequently than did the field-voles. For
several years a pair of kestrels had lived in the valley, and had reared
their young in a nest built on a ledge of rock above the Cerdyn brook
and safe beyond the reach of marauding schoolboys. The hen-kestrel, when
provender became scarce, would regularly at noon beat her way across the
hill-top to the ridge where the red voles lived, and, watching and
waiting, with keen eyes and ready talons, would remain in the air above
the burrow as if poised at the end of an invisible thread. Chiefly she
was the terror of the bank-voles; but often, impatient of failure, she
would slant her fans and drift towards the burrows in the mossy pasture,
hoping to find that the grey voles had awakened for an hour from their
winter sleep.

Once, when the breeze blew gently from the south and the sun was bright,
Kweek, sitting on a grassy mound, saw a shadow rapidly approaching, and
heard a sharp swish of powerful wings. Though drowsy and stiff from his
winter sleep, he was roused for the moment by the imminence of danger,
a