a neck behind, and the
third not half a length. The smooth road rising slightly in the centre
showed them well; and thus, with the neck stretched out in front and
the tail extended in the rear, the stoat appears much longer than on a
mound or in the grass.

A second or so afterwards two more started from the same spot; but I
was perhaps in the act to move, for before they had gone three yards
they saw me and rushed back to the drain. After a few minutes the
larger of these two, probably the male, ventured forth again and
reached the middle of the road, when he discovered that his more
timorous companion had not followed but was only just peeping out. He
stopped and elevated his neck some five or six inches, planting the
fore-feet so as to lift him up high to see round, while his
hindquarters were flush with the road, quite flat in the dust in which
his tail was trailing. His reddish body and white neck, the clear-cut
head, the sharp ears, and dark eye were perfectly displayed in that
erect attitude. As his companion still hesitated he cried twice, as if
impatiently, 'check, check'--a sound like placing the tongue against
the teeth and drawing it away. But she feared to follow, and he
returned to her. Thinking they would attempt to cross again presently,
I waited quietly.

A lark came over from the wheat, and, alighting, dusted herself in the
road, hardly five yards from the mouth of the drain, and was there
some minutes. A robin went still closer--almost opposite the hole;
both birds apparently quite unconscious of the bloodthirsty creatures
concealed within it. Some time passed, but the two stoats did not come
out, and I saw no more of them: they probably retreated to the wheat
as I left the gateway, and would remain there till the noise and jar
of my footsteps had ceased in the distance. Examining the road, there
was a trail where the first three had crossed in quick succession. In
the thick white dust their swift feet had left a line drawn roughly
yet lightly, the paws leaving not an exact but an elongated,
ill-defined impression. But where the fourth stopped, elevated his
neck, and cried to his mate, there was a perfect print of the
fore-feet side by side. So slight a track would be obliterated by the
first cart that came by.

Till that day I had never seen so many as five stoats together hunting
in a pack. It would seem as if stoats and weasels had regular routes;
for I now recollected that in the previous wint