hen the brown scum, that sign of coming warmth,
rises from the bottom of the waters. Returning to the pond, it may be
noticed that the cart-horses when they walk in of a summer's day paw
the stream, as if they enjoyed the cool sound of the splash; but the
cows stand quite still with the water up to their knees.

There is a spot by a yet more quiet bridge, where the little
water-shrews play to and fro where the bank overhangs. As they dive
and move under water the reddish-brown back looks of a lighter colour;
when they touch the ground they thrust their tiny nostrils up just
above the surface. There are many holes of water-rats, but no one
would imagine how numerous these latter creatures are. One of Hilary's
sons, Hugh, kept some ferrets, and in the summer was put to it to find
them enough food. The bird-keepers brought in a bird occasionally, and
there were cruel rumours of a cat having disappeared. Still there was
not sufficient till he hit on the idea of trapping the water-rats; and
this is how he did it.

He took three small twigs and ran them into the bank of the brook at
the mouth of the water-rat's hole and just beneath the surface of the
stream. These made a platform upon which the gin was placed--the pan,
and indeed all the trap, just under the water, which prevented any
scent. Whether the rat came out of his hole and plunged to dive or
started to swim, or whether he came swimming noiselessly round the
bend and was about to enter the burrow, it made no difference; he was
certain to pass over and throw the gin. The instant the teeth struck
him he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and it
immediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for the
water-rat, though continually diving, can only stay a short time under
water. It proved a fatal contrivance, chiefly, as was supposed,
because the gin, being just under the water, could not be smelt. No
fewer than eleven rats were thus captured in succession at the mouth
of one hole. Altogether 150 were taken in the course of that summer.

Hugh kept a record of them by drawing a stroke with chalk for every
rat on the red brick wall of the stable, near his ferret-hutch. He
only used a few traps--one was set not at a hole, but at a sharp curve
of the brook--and the whole of these rats were taken in a part of the
brook about 250 or 300 yards in length, just where it ran through a
single field. The great majority were water-rats, but there were