stump was unsurpassable. There were
three exits from the hollow base. Up the shaft there was yet another.
Thick brambles fringed it on every side, and in those brambles were many
birds' nests. The stump was an ideal nursery; as such the stoat had
employed it. He had left to its friendly protection his family of six,
with a young rabbit to keep them occupied. He, himself, was now in quest
of frogs.

The hedgehog bore on his back clear tokens of his last retreat. A dozen
withered leaves were clinging to his spines. The nearest pile of such lay
heaped against the hen-house. The hedgehog footed through the knotgrass
slowly, grubbing with his snout to right and left of him. Sometimes, when
cover failed, he broke into a bow-legged run.

The squirrel came from high up in the beech tree--the second fork from
the top. There he had built what he called a nest, but what humans, with
greater nicety of diction, call a drey. Speak not of squirrel's "nest" to
sportsmen; to speak of fox's "burrow" were hardly less heinous. The drey
was eminently satisfactory, for, in the summer months, it was completely
hidden. Yet three days inside it had been more than sufficient for the
squirrel. He was cold, hungry, and cramped in every limb. To quicken the
blood within him, he flung himself at lightning speed from bough to bough,
from tree to tree, up and down the branches, in and out the maze of
dripping foliage, until his every hair was tipped with a raindrop, and he
was almost weary. Then he paused a moment for breath and shook himself,
dog-fashion.

The mole's uneasy, crimson-pointed muzzle came from a hole right on the
water's edge. He was feeling for the water. Last night the swollen river
had forced its way a yard into his run, and he had blundered headlong into
it. Swimming is easy to the mole, but swimming in an inch-wide tube is
risky. So, to-night, he was cautious. It might have been fine all day,
or it might have been wet, for all he knew.

The grass-snake seemed to come up from the river bottom. His head suddenly
parted the water beneath the old pollard, and he swam slowly across the
stream, craning his neck before him. The pollard was inwardly rotten to
the core--a snug retreat for snakes, to which the only entrance was a
water-way.

The dormouse came from halfway up the hazel, and the wood-mouse came from
its roots. They, too, had been three days weather bound; but they were not
hungry. Each had its winter store to draw upon.