silver bell. It would have taken a score of him to make
a mole.

"I am older than the mole," he said, "yet from him I take my name. In
dry ground I make poor progress; where it is muddy and swampy, I can run
through it, like a fish through water. When the mole came into being, he
borrowed the pattern of my fore feet--shovel and pick and spade in one.
Like me, he learnt to run backwards or forwards, and that is why his hair
has no set in it. Whichever way he goes, the clinging dust is swept from
off its surface. He comes from grubby depths as polished as a pin. And so
do I; but from a different cause. I am so highly polished that the damp
soil cannot cleave to me."

"Burrowing," said the hedgehog, "is a low form of defence. What says the
water-rat?"

"I burrow, too," said the water-rat. "If I have time, I burrow in the
water. I part the surface with the tiniest ripple, keeping my fore feet
close packed to my sides, and swim with hind legs only, below the surface,
neatly as a natterjack. If I were better treated, I should never burrow in
the banks at all. But I must have somewhere to go to when my breath fails
me. I eat the mare's tail and the pith of reed-stems. That does no one any
harm, not even a trout-preserver. But of all good viands, commend me to a
parsnip."

"This is neither defence nor offence," said the hedgehog.

"The only offensive thing I have is a pair of incisors," said the
water-rat. "They are orange-yellow and very strong. As regards defence, I
can do more in the water than most."

[Illustration: "NOT MORE THAN ME," THE YOUNG TROUT BROKE IN.]

"Not more than me," the young trout broke in. He flung his nose jauntily
against the surface, and the surface swung from it in widening eddies,
circle after circle. "I can be up to the weir and down again before you
are halfway across the stream. When humans build their destroyers, they
model them on me. I know that, because I have seen their clumsy models,
trout-shaped, save the mark!"

"That is enough from any one of your years," said the hedgehog. "Little
river-fishes run away from big river-fishes, and big river-fishes run away
from bigger river-fishes, and they all run away from the otter."

The jack that lived in the deep below the pollard grinned, but said
nothing. The jack knew better, but he never _says_ anything. But the
gudgeon and the troutling were terrified at the notion of bigger fishes,
and made straight for the weeds.

[Illustration: BU