seemed to abandon every thought of the possibility of
danger. Simply for the love of exercise and in enjoyment of the tranquil
night, she played about the pool till the dawn peeped over the hills;
then, tired of her frolic, she sought her secret "holt," and, curling
her tail about her face and holding her hind-paws closely between her
fore-paws, fell asleep.

While she gambolled in the water, even her quickest movements were as
graceful as those of a salmon stemming the rapids and leaping into the
shallows above the rock. Diving into the depths, she avoided with
scarcely an effort the tangled roots and branches, that, washed thither
by the floods, had long been the dread of anglers when heavy fish were
hooked. Ceasing all exertion as she turned into the current, she floated
to the surface and was borne away down-stream. She swam at highest speed
from the tail to the throat of the pool, and drifted idly back to the
place from which she had started; then, changing her methods, she
skirted slowly the edge of the current, and with one long, straight
dive shot down from the head of the rapids to the still water near her
"holt."

From playing thus about the pool, the otter learned the power of the
current, and how it hastened or retarded her while she pursued her prey.
But most of all, during the hours of the placid night, she delighted to
frolic in the torrent immediately below the rock, where, matching her
strength against that of the river, she leaped and dived and tumbled
through the foam, or, lying on her back amid a shower of spray,
stretched wide her limbs and suffered the whirlpool to draw her,
unresisting, into its vortex deep beneath the fall.

Lutra sometimes noticed, while she drifted with the current, that the
scent of her kindred lay strong at the surface not far from her "holt."
One still, moonlit night the scent indicated that several full-grown
otters had at intervals come from the trout-reaches down-stream, and had
landed in a reed-bed at the lower end of the pool. It led away from the
river through the valley, along by a number of stagnant ponds in an old
garden near the farm, and thence to a point beyond a bend where the
river flowed almost parallel to its course at the pool. As the otter,
inquisitively following the line of the scent, came to the ponds, she
heard the croaking of countless frogs hidden in the duckweed that lay
over the entire surface of the water. Lutra made ample use of the
opportunity