Chapter III: Part 3

"It is quite safe," explained the Roebuck; "we are good friends. Next to the red grouse, there is no bird or beast that does so much for the red deer as we do. At the first sign of danger we give the alarm, and send the red herd scampering over the hills out of harm's way. Often when the stalkers are abroad we spoil their day's work by coming between them and the quarry. So you have nothing to fear from our big cousins."

Reassured, the doe and her fawns accompanied the roebuck to the high hills, choosing night-time for the journey, with the fear of mankind before them. Food was less plentiful in the high grounds, but there were sufficient grasses to keep serious trouble away, and the cool shade was free from the worries that went with it below.

From their new home they could see right across the pinewood, over the plantation of birch, alder, juniper and Scotch fir, and thence across the low-lying fields of ripening corn. And when they sat head to wind no danger could come their way. Change of residence had made the doe, at least, very suspicious of unaccustomed sights and sounds; the buck was bolder and more assured.

August found the horns of the red deer fully grown and nearly free from velvet, and it brought the stalkers to the forest. The sharp crack of the rifle passed so quickly that it left little terror behind, the greater cause for alarm was the stalker himself. Did the Roebuck wind one he would bark defiantly, and his cry was as significant as the crow of the red grouse, who also hated intruders. It was well for the stalkers that the roedeer had another interest in middle August--it was the season of their lovemaking, and then they were less careful about questions of concealment.

The buck and the doe were more than ever devoted to one another now, and the fawns were left to their own devices. They courted and played, and were happy as though the month were April instead of August, and when one fine morning another roebuck wished to intrude, there was a terrible battle. The two fawns watched it from a distance. As soon as their father saw the intruder for the first time, he rushed at him with lowered head; the newcomer lowered his to receive the charge, and the horns of both seemed to be locked together. They separated, but drew off only to rush at one another again, and as each wished to avoid the other's shock the charge was ineffective. Then they kicked with their forelegs and stood up, and in that position the parent roebuck managed to get in a thrust that ripped the intruder's flank badly. This ended the struggle, the stranger retreated, leaving a little trail of blood to mark his trail. Mother doe had watched the combatants from a safe distance, and as soon as the fight was over she called in her own subdued fashion, and her mate, forgetful of his bruises, rushed headlong to her side. It had been an anxious time for the doe, for, according to the forest laws, she must have followed the stranger had he proved a victor.

On the afternoon of the same day the parents were still together, and the fawns had rambled to some rocks at the head of the corrie. They saw no danger below, and all around the place was deserted. But far away in the blue depths above the Golden Eagle hung for a moment quite motionless, wondering where his supper would come from. The little doe-fawn, suspecting no evil, had advanced to the edge of the high rock overlooking the valley; she was clearly to be seen from the eagle's post of observation. With quick, fierce swoop the great bird shot through space, and stuck his cruel talons deep into the fawn's shoulders. As he did so he buffeted her fiercely with his heavy wings, and she fell headlong on to the rock below--dead. Assured by one rapid circling flight that no danger was to be feared the eagle followed, tore from the half-formed body the parts that pleased him best, and then rose with a hoarse scream of triumph to wash red beak and claws in the nearest water.

The parents did not seem to notice their loss as they would have done in the earlier year, but the little roebuck had seen the tragedy as he lay crouched in the adjacent heather, pressed as closely to the ground as the hare in her form. He at least knew now that danger came from every side. And, as though to enforce recollection of the fact, it chanced that he was feeding in cover by a hill-side track one evening a week later, when the sound of footsteps made him crouch very low.

The sounds came nearer, he was afraid to move, and presently a pony came down the narrow track with a gillie by its side. Tied on to the pony's back was a red deer--dead, a gaping wound in its throat. The little roebuck knew the victim for a royal stag, one of the monarchs of the forest, whose antlers were the admiration of every hind in the district. Yes, a rifle had cracked twice in the late afternoon in the direction of a corrie that the great stag favoured, and, doubtless, a bullet had found its billet. The fawn crept back to his mother's side, he did not care to ramble any more.

A great chill came to the forest, and there were morning and evening mists that made feeding difficult.

"We will return to the plantation," said the father roebuck; "it will be pleasant down there now."

So they made their way back to the first home in the plantation, and all three began to change their coat, losing the red covering the parents had worn since May, and the young one had worn since the last white patches had left him. By October, when the great red deer were roaring on the high hills, and the stalker had laid his rifle down, roebuck, doe and fawn wore the thicker livery that would be theirs till spring returned.

It had not come before it was required, for the brief season of good weather had passed. Now the clouds hid the high hills, the red grouse had packed, the ptarmigan was putting on his white dress, and the blue hare of the hills was following his wise example.

With the winter dress the appearance of the elder roedeer improved considerably. They began to grow fat, and found an abundance of food. The tops of young trees, ivy and rowan berries served the doe and fawn, but the Roebuck was not averse from a raid on the turnip fields below the plantation, and enjoyed many a meal of corn until the last stooks were carried.

Owing to his night-prowling habits, his extreme quickness of eye and ear, and inconspicuous colouring, he could travel unobserved and with comparative impunity over to the farm lands. Doe and fawn were less venturesome, and preferred to accept the restricted diet of the plantation, rather than wander far afield. The Roebuck's favourite movement was a canter that became a gallop when alarmed; he never trotted, but was always ready to jump, and could accomplish great feats if hard pressed.

With the end of December the Roebuck's antlers, which had been growing very loose, dropped off altogether, and for the next six or seven weeks the new ones remained undeveloped. At last they were complete, and their proud owner rubbed off the last shreds of velvet against one of the trees in the plantation. By this time the fawn had put out two little points, his first year's horn, and he was so proud of them that he damaged many saplings in order to test their efficiency.

To such a young roebuck the points were not an unmixed blessing. Sometimes when he ran out of the plantation into the pine-wood the wire fencing would catch and hurt them, and the damage done in the months when his head was very tender quite spoilt its shape, and made his horns grow awry all the days of his life. Though he had his fair share of vanity, this mischance did not trouble him greatly, for when he went abroad after he had grown up, there were few roebuck better off than he.

In his first winter another family joined his parents--a buck, a doe, and a little doe-fawn about his own age. They moved and fed together right into the spring; does and fawns keeping well within the precincts of the wood, while the roebuck ventured afield. They were constantly on the look-out for food, but had their stated hours for eating it. Early morning, noon and sunset seemed to be their meal-times, and then they would feed very delicately and within quite a small space, ready to take alarm if a branch cracked at the far end of the wood, or a dog barked beyond the border of the arable land, or the breeze that faced them as they fed carried on its wings the scent of man the enemy.

In May the two families separated, and the does retired to the most secluded corners they could find. The Young Roebuck was now left to his own devices, and celebrated the change by putting on the summer suit of ruddy brown, that shone when he ventured into the light. Nearly a month was occupied by the change, and during that time he felt sick and out of condition; but as soon as the transformation was complete his spirits revived, and he was ready for any adventure. Throughout July he indulged in the roughest play with young bucks of his own age, but his single points kept the fighting from becoming dangerous, and he could not bark as his elders did in that season. He went up to the hills alone one night, following the tracks of the past year for it was his rule always to choose a path he knew, and to travel in darkness, or between the lights.

Depending upon his own exertions for supplies, he lived in comfort until the month of August woke the stalkers into life, and then, with the nervousness common to his years, he thought that every gun was directed against his life. His keen hearing, fine sight and prompt action often gave the alarm to less wary red deer; and, if half the stalkers' curses had taken effect, his tenure of life would have been brief. As it was, he went back to the plantation at the end of September full of the belief that his life was threatened, and this thought inspiring all his movements, doubtless lengthened his days.

For once there was a keen hunter of roedeer in the district; a man who had shot game in the wonderful country lying between the Zambesi river and the Uganda Protectorate and was anxious to try his hand at the deer of his native land. Already he had secured fine heads of the larger deer, and now he was bent upon following the roe, and studying the habits of the ground game. Throughout the plantation roedeer changed their coats to the brown and yellow livery of the colder season; and it became hard for the experienced eye to follow their movements. They glided through the wood's most shadowy places, lightly as the sun across a meadow in June; never a leaf stirred or a branch cracked beneath their tread, for the paths of their going and coming were marked.

Children making an excursion to the wood saw the circling tracks of the roedeer, and thought that they were fairy rings made by Queen Mab for her nightly revels. But the fairies were only the little deer who could see the children and yet remain unseen, and were never seriously disturbed by their stray visits. In May and June children were not allowed to enter the wood, for the does were with their babies then, and might have done an injury to intruders.

Through the heat of summer the deer were in the high hills, and in the autumn they were very shy. The hunter noticed these things. He loved the country, time was his own, and he chose a corner of the land from which he could mark some of the comings and goings of the roedeer, with the help of his strong glass. Then he waited all night among the corn stooks, enduring the cold and the mist with complete indifference; and as the dawn was breaking he surprised the roedeer's father. The old buck gave two leaps and was off at a gallop. The hunter remained perfectly cool, his keen eye told him what allowance he must make for the pace; and when he fired the buck gave one last despairing jump into the air and fell dead. By the edge of the corn land the Young Roebuck, who had seen everything, lay low on the ground in an agony of terror, just as he crouched when the golden eagle of the mountain seized his sister in the previous year.

It was late November and the roedeer were growing very fat; they had grain, turnip roots and rowan berries, as well as the tender parts of trees and grasses to feed upon, and perhaps the quality of the food supply kept them to their old home, in spite of the danger that surrounded it. Now, the hunter knew the numbers and sizes of the wood's inhabitants, and he secured two more bucks of first head before they lost their horns. And in January and February he shot several fat does, matching his cunning against theirs, and having no help save that of a well-trained dog.

He might have shot the Young Roebuck had he cared to, but the new horns had nothing more than the forward tine that shoots out in the second year, about two-thirds of the way from the base, and the hunter had no use for so small a head. With the end of February he left Scotland, and three summers had come to the land before he returned.

In his absence the wood remained undisturbed. A few roedeer were shot by farmers among the corn lands; in one very severe winter several were killed by poachers, but the young roebuck had escaped all trouble.

In his third year the backward tine had come between the forward one and the end of the point, and thereafter he was completely armed. He had learned to bark quite loudly, had fought for a doe and won her from her former master; he was a parent though without responsibilities, and was reckoned one of the most cunning deer of the woodland.

Though he travelled far and wide no trouble came his way, hooks and nets failed to snare him. Angry farmers, stalkers and owners of the young plantations to which he did so much harm could not reach him with their vengeance; he seemed to bear a charmed life. Even when he rested there was some avenue by which tidings of danger could find way to his brain and restore his full consciousness on the instant. His winter weight was over fifty pounds, and his antlers were over nine inches, though their shape had been spoiled in the days when they were no more than simple points.

The hunter came back to the Highlands in late August and pursued the red deer until they began to roar and seek the hinds. Then he went South, to return in January when the snow was on the ground, when the Highland world seemed given over to storms, and the roebuck had lost their horns. He sought his accustomed corner and waited to see the roedeer feeding. Very soon the glass revealed all things to him. He saw the doe come from the wood to enjoy the stock of roots that had been piled, by his direction, at the edge of the arable land. Presently a buck of the fourth year joined her--a fine heavy beast.

In other parts of the woodland he saw other roedeer, and he knew that severe weather had driven some of the red deer down from the high hills above him. But the first pair of deer always captivated his attention. He could not have known that they were old friends, and that he had spared that same buck when his horns were hardly formed. Perhaps he was attracted by the elaborate pains this buck and doe took to avoid observation, by the way in which the buck pushed his companion forward as an advance guard, and disappeared at the first sign or sound of danger, leaving her to follow undirected. For days he endeavoured to get near them, using a well-trained hound, watching in the neighbourhood of their rings, even employing Donald to aid him in the quest.

Four years of keen observation had made the Roebuck more wary than ever, and, aided by his protective colouring, he passed lightly from plantation to pine-wood, unheard and unseen, while the doe was equally successful in escaping pursuit. For days together they would leave the hunter's boundaries, but they always returned when they thought the place was quiet; and in the meantime the roebuck's antler's grew, and the velvet stripped, and he was becoming a splendid buck with haunch and head alike at their best.

Many men would have been baffled, but the hunter was unlike most people, and did not know when he was beaten. His experience had been gained in many countries, his store of woodcraft was very large. He made a very careful study of the tracks by which the roedeer left the plantation for pine-wood and feeding grounds, and then, after leaving the place quite quiet for several days, took advantage of a strong wind, and stole up to a point where Donald had dug a pit and put a screen of heather. There were other dummy screens round the sides of the plantation, and the roedeer had ceased to fear them.

That evening the doe came out and made her way to a small patch of sweet grass that the trees had sheltered from the snow. She seemed very suspicious and ill at ease, and many times stood for a moment with head erect and fore-foot raised as though to sniff the breeze. At last she was within sixty yards of the pit, and broadside on, and even as the hunter pressed the trigger that sent the notched bullet speeding to her brain, he knew that his aim was true. Quickly as possible he carried off the spoil, glad at heart, for he knew that her mate must soon be his.

For two days and nights the snow fell, and then on a clear afternoon he sallied forth again, taking advantage of wind and cover to reach his pit unobserved. The woodland was desolate and still, no sound of life was to be heard. He laid his rifle gently down and took from his pocket the little call given to him by an old deer-stalker of the Austrian highlands. He put it to his mouth.

In the heart of the plantation the Roebuck, who walked now with clean horns of splendid growth, heard the music that the doe makes in the most pleasant season of his life. True to his predominant instinct he forgot the claims of caution, and rushed headlong in the direction of the sound. It came from behind a little mound of snow, where the heather patch had stood. The separating distance became eighty, sixty, forty yards, and then a long barrel peeped out towards him, and with a mighty effort he checked his gallop and prepared to turn.

In that brief moment of change the rifle spoke, and he tumbled dead in his tracks.

THE WATER-RAT

Many people know the river in and round the market-town that stands upon its banks, but very few have seen the parent stream where it passes rippling for some hundreds of yards between narrow banks in the shadow of old willow trees, for here it is on private ground. You could not wish to see more beautiful country. There are high hills crowned with woods and level meadows where grass is always green, and the willows share with the poplars the custody of the water. Tiny little tributaries enter the main stream here and there, but Jock the water-rat looked upon these with some contempt, as though he thought they were suburban. He had his home in the roots under an old willow tree. You saw one hole in the bank just above the water, but there were others under the water, and in the meadow.

When the summer day was fine and long, Jock would sit at the edge of the hole that was made in the bank, and would survey the world with a cautious eye and a contented expression. He was no longer a young water-rat, and he had not passed through his life without learning that he had enemies, but in this part of the river the trout were few and of small size--far too small indeed to trouble water-rats, and the eels that collected lower down by the mill seldom came in his direction, the feeding was not good enough. Of great coarse fish like pike there was little need for fear, the water was too shallow to tempt them to come so far up. If we except the old heron who was no longer as smart as he had been in the days of his youth, and now stood on one leg as often as he did on two, and missed his stroke as often as he made it, Jock had no enemies in the water, and this is as it should have been, for there never was a more harmless little animal.

He wore a brown coat well oiled, and carried a black tail with a white tip, of which he was absurdly proud, for such a decoration in water-rat land denotes that the wearer is of good family, and Jock had cousins and distant relatives by the score who could not boast such an adornment. He was proud of the many doored home he had made for himself, and still more proud of the river which, he believed, had been put there for his benefit. He would sit for hours where the light could just reach him and listen attentively to the soft song of the water, and the louder note of larks that sang in the sky above him.

From time to time he would look with a patronising eye upon Mrs. Moorhen who often brought her little black babies past the door of his house when the mantle of summer was spread over the land. In her early days Mrs. Moorhen had quite mistrusted him, she thought he was like the big brown rats that lived about the barns and sometimes came to the water side, and did what harm they could from the time when their eyes opened until the fatal day came when the keeper brought his terriers and his ferrets to the home farm and killed them in their hundreds.

"I assure you, Madam," said Jock, upon the day when he cleared his character, "I would not harm you if I could, and I could not harm you if I would. I have nothing at all to do with the brown rats of the barn, my skin is darker than theirs, and my tail is altogether different. Why, the white tip ought to have told you as much, even if the length had not. Then too, my legs are shorter, and I have yellow claws, and yellow colouring on my fur. Those fellows who live up by the barns are merely brown. They will eat anything or anybody, and the dirtier their food is the better they like it, but I have delicate tastes and am altogether a clean liver."

"Will you give me your word of honour," said Mrs. Moorhen, "that you have never eaten an egg?"

"Quite readily," he replied. "My food consists entirely of roots and flowers and water weeds. I've never tasted an egg in my life."

Perhaps Mrs. Moorhen was not altogether satisfied at first, for she watched very carefully from among the rushes and roots to see when and where Jock fed. The sight reassured her. After sitting very quietly for an hour or so enjoying the view and the music, he would let himself down easily into the water, and swim to some plant that seemed to tempt his appetite. He would bite it from root or stem, swim back again to his doorway, and then squat upon his hind-legs and eat with great deliberation. When he had finished he would remove all the débris very carefully, and wash himself like the clean little animal he was. Sometimes he would carry his food on to the bank, or even seek it on the bank and eat quite away from his burrow, but his movements were all so simple and so harmless that Mrs. Moorhen could but be reassured, and she soon came to the conclusion that it was a good thing to have a friend in a world that was so full of enemies.

"I haven't seen you here for long," she explained, "and when I saw you first you were running on the land, and that made me suspicious. You were not in these parts when I came to them in the autumn."

"The truth is," he explained, "that I have only just come back to my home for the summer. During the winter months I could not face the water for long, and I could not sit at the door of my burrow because the river had risen so high, so I was forced to go inland when I was not asleep.

"You may not know," he went on, seeing that his companion looked rather puzzled, "that during the very cold weather I sleep as long as I can, sometimes for days together. Then I wake up very hungry and must go in search of food, and as I cannot find much to eat in the water it is sometimes necessary to go to the fields to find a meal in the roots."

"Are they not all cleared away by the time the very bad weather comes?" inquired Mrs. Moorhen.

"They have been taken up," he replied, "but there is generally enough left to yield more than I could possibly eat if I started at the end of the summer and never went to sleep until the spring. Sometimes I store roots and grasses in my burrow, but last year two land rats came to it. I was frightened and would not return. I have no trouble at all about the food supply; my only care is to avoid the creatures that one sometimes meets on the fields in early morning or at dusk."

"I know," said the bird with a little shiver. "You mean great big men with guns and dogs. I knew a mallard who came to live here in the rushes with his wife, and we became very friendly. He had the most beautiful green feathers I have ever seen in birdland. One morning in January when there was a hard frost and my friends were lying low in the rushes, a big dog came up to them, and they jumped up to fly away. They went head to wind to keep their feathers in the proper place for the breeze was strong. Before they had gone as far as the bridge there was a hideous noise, and then another hideous noise, and one fell dead on the land, and the other fell dead in the water, and the dog went after them and picked them up, and I buried myself in the water up to the tip of my nose and felt terribly afraid."

"I have heard those noises," said Jock, "but I don't think men would harm you or me; we do no hurt to anybody, and they don't need us for their food. My enemies are the stoats and the weasels that run along the hedgerows and kill rabbits and anything else they can get their teeth into. Many of my family have suffered death at their hands, and I am always afraid when I go on the land lest they should see my beautiful tail. If they did it would be all up with me, for they can walk faster than I can run. On my bank I am safe for I can drop into the water, and the weasel or stoat that can follow me there may have all he can get. I don't mind men, they never seek to hurt me. I don't like boys because some have thrown stones at me, and I don't like women because one passed last summer when I sat washing myself by my door, and she said: 'Oh, there's a horrid rat!' and ran away."

In those late spring days there was not much opportunity for conversation. Mr. and Mrs. Moorhen had built a nest in the roots of a willow tree, so close to the water that had it risen an inch or two the eggs must have been destroyed; and Mrs. Water-rat had retired to a nest at the far end of the burrow well above the water line, a nest of weeds and grass that had been bitten into tiny pieces and shaped rather like a cup. Jock in those days had less time for sunning and washing himself than he thought he needed, and was constantly in the water searching for dainties for his wife, or looking out for attractive pieces of grass or weed that he thought were needed to make the nest still more beautiful. Sometimes his wife would come from the nest for a brief wash and return immediately. Before May had passed, and at a time when the river banks were loaded with an abundance of food that must have gladdened any water-rat's heart, Jock was the father of six little blind baby water-rats, and Mrs. Moorhen was the mother of eight tiny little babies, that looked like balls of soot, so round and so black were they. It was a busy time, but yet Jock found hours through which it was possible to listen to the lark, or to watch the bats when they gathered towards evening and fluttered through the air in pursuit of the flies and insects that could never get away. In all the land there were no happier families than those of the harmless bird that lived among the rushes, and the good water-rat whose record defied reproach.

"If I could find nothing else to eat," he said one day when he had been explaining his rules of life to his friends, who paused on the water just in front of his burrow, with their little family playing round them, "I might be tempted to eat some of those young frogs. Some of my cousins do so, but they have rather low tastes, and you wouldn't find a white tip to any tail among them. I hold that it's wrong, for there's no excuse here to be anything but a vegetarian."

Doubtless the little frogs who had been tadpoles so recently and now swarmed all over the grass, were very pleased to hear the news, for they had quite enough enemies already, the old heron being the most determined of them all. Though he sometimes missed his aim when he struck at a fish now, he seldom made a mistake about a frog, and as he too had domestic duties and a family to provide for, he was terribly in earnest. Had he stayed in the narrower part of the river, it might have gone ill with Jock and his family, but he felt the need of the biggest fish he could find, and preferred the neighbourhood of the mill where there were eels in abundance and he had a fair sporting chance of capturing a young pike or two.

Jock and his wife had quite enough work to do in the early summer days when their young were ready to leave the snug nest at the end of the burrow. It was not difficult to teach them to swim, when once they could be coaxed into the water, for their natural instinct aided them, and they took more readily to the water than birds that are born in high trees take to the air. But it was exceedingly difficult to make them understand, in the first joy of their newly discovered achievement, that the river held dangers in its waters, that if the parent water-rats were too big for the small fish, the little ones in those early days were quite tempting morsels. Though the father water-rat was quite a foot long from tip of nose to tip of tail, his children could not claim more than three inches.

Then too, the babies were inclined to scatter and to be curious, and to go on voyages of discovery on their own account when they had passed the period of extreme helplessness that came to them at birth.

In the days when they first looked out upon the water they had no liking for it, and were carried for their swimming lesson in fashion rather similar to that employed by the seal when she takes her little one for the first time to the depths that are to serve as home for the greater part of his life. When the moment came to leave the baby water-rat alone, the father or mother would swim away from it, and the little one would find that it could not drown, and that the water could not even soak its scanty covering. The water-rat's coat is full of oil that keeps the water standing in a thousand little bubbles on the points of its hair unless it stays for a very long time under the water, and no water-rats do this unless they are attracted by some roots that require a lot of investigation. The young water-rats swam with head and back right out of the water. At first they knew no other way, for this was the method that their parents practised, but they were soon to learn that, in times of danger, the body must be sunk altogether, and only the tip of the nose allowed to show above the water. The moorhens dived in similar fashion, and each thought that the one imitated the other.

"I daresay you find our method of diving very useful when you're at all alarmed," said Mr. Moorhen to Mrs. Water-rat.

"I see you've learned to dive just as I do," said Jock to Mrs. Moorhen. "It's the best way to get about, and you've learned the trick perfectly." It would have been hard to make either believe that the other had not copied his action.

As soon as the young family was fully grown it scattered up and down the stream. Jock and his wife were kindly parents enough, and would doubtless have been well pleased to keep their youngsters by their side, but the burrow was not big enough for a family that numbered eight in all. There were splendid positions for other burrows all along the banks, and the young rats, knowing nothing of late autumn and winter, were well assured that the supplies of duckweed, water-lilies, young flags and tender roots of every description would never come to an end. To them at least that little bend of the river was the world,--a world full of good things; so some went north, and others went south to make new friends and start independent housekeeping. The two that went to the north, that is to say in the direction of the river's source, fared well. The four that went down stream had no luck at all. Two fell victims to the eels that lived by the mill pond, another was found by a hungry pike, and the fourth, having ventured on to the land, under the impression that he had discovered it, was seen by an active weasel who would not be denied. By that time, however, August had come to an end. Mrs. Water-rat in her snug little burrow that had had several leaves and pieces of weeds added to it by the affectionate Jock was the mother of another half-dozen babies. Mrs. Moorhen, who had endeavoured to raise another brood some weeks earlier, was not so fortunate, for her eggs were found by a land rat, one of the long-tailed, sharp-nosed, lean ugly fellows that do so much more harm than good. But that the unfortunate mother was actually driven off her nest by the intruder, and could see for herself what manner of animal it was, she might have had doubts about the earlier story that her friend of the burrow across the bank had told her.

]

Before the autumn days had turned the greenery of the land to gold a spell of bad weather set in, accompanied by severe rains that raised the level of the river considerably. The entries to the burrow were flooded and, owing to a temporary obstruction at the bend of the river, the water threatened to pierce to the nest at the far end. On this account it was impossible for the young water-rats to go to the river as their brothers and sisters born in the earlier year had done, and for a time their parents fed them upon the land, carrying them to safety through the land holes of the burrow to the meadow-side, and always holding them in their mouths by the loose skin at the back of the neck. From time to time one of the parent animals would return to the water, plunging off the bank, and generally coming up by the doorway to see whether any change had occurred in the level of the water. These constant visits to the river were in a way a necessity to the animals, because the oily secretion that kept their fur from feeling the effects of the water, was not limited to the fur, but extended to the face, and only frequent use of water kept their eyes clear. With the very little ones this was hardly the case at first; until they were fully grown they could live with comparative comfort upon the land for a much longer period than was possible with their parents.

It was while returning to the river on one of these occasions that Jock met with what might have proved a fatal encounter. One of the young herons born in the spring had strayed into the neighbourhood in search of a fresh feeding ground, and spied what he took to be an appetising morsel. He darted a stroke at it that would have ended this story on the spot had not his intended victim been a little too quick, and dived. The bird remained watching for any sign that would indicate the return to the surface, knowing, by the instinct that serves every creature in pursuit of its prey, that in the nature of things Jock could not stay under the surface of the water for very long. Had the river been quite clear the water-rat might have been seen swimming close to the river bed; as it was, the recent rains in swelling the stream had made it muddy, and Jock was able to move to a point where the water had collected and left a mass of early fallen leaves. He travelled at a great pace under the water and came up under these so lightly that never a leaf was stirred, to remain perfectly motionless with no more than the tip of his head above water. A branch that had fallen into the stream kept him from being swept away by the force of the current, and he stayed there while the heron moved up and down with a succession of awkward strides, waiting patiently for what promised to be worth working for. Exposed to the force of the water which was running rather sharply past the corner where the leaves were covering him, Jock's fur was speedily soaked, and for the first time in his life the protection of oil did not avail to keep his skin dry. Happily, the heron being young and foolish soon gave up the search, and stalked solemnly up the stream where water was more shallow, leaving his intended prey to scramble up the bank with some difficulty, and to lie still, wet and miserable and helpless until the sun came out and dried his fur and he was able by diligent combing and cleaning to reduce it to something like its natural condition.

Owing to the peculiar formation of his feet Jock was able to dress the whole of his fur as easily and completely as a bat might, and by the following morning he was in no way the worse for the mischance. He lived in the same relation to land and water that the bat lived in with regard to land and the upper air.

As the weather did not improve the river burrow was left altogether, and another was made in a field some little distance off. The necessary work was done by night and very early morning, and for the greater part of the day the family remained hidden in the burrow for the farm hands were at work upon the land, and the confidence associated with the water-side home had quite disappeared on the land. But the old burrow was not deserted altogether. In the early days of autumn the old grasses of the nest were brought out and left on the land, while a store of fresh clean roots was carried in to serve the family during the winter months in case of need.

By the time winter had gripped the country-side, Jock's second family had scattered, leaving him with his wife in possession of the land-earth they had selected for their winter home. Sometimes they would travel as far as the stack yard of the home farm in search of their food, and were quite devoted in their attentions to the piles of root crop that were gathered under straw at the end of the last field waiting to be taken away in wheel-barrows and chopped up for the cattle. Jock and his wife would not have ventured so far from home had it not been that the brown rats of barnland had been almost exterminated some weeks before. When the last of the roots had been taken away, and all the land on which green corn was not rising had been ploughed, dressed and, generally speaking, made unfit for the water-rat's attentions, Jock and his wife paid occasional visits to their store at the burrow end. Sometimes during spells of very cold weather they slept there for days on end, celebrating their return to wakefulness by a plunge into the river. Not even the coldest weather could keep them from being clean.

Spring came at last, and the two water-rats left their home on the land, and returned to the burrow upon the banks. The water had fallen, and though it had left the burrow's bank-side door choked with débris, the clearance was an easy matter. Once again the interior of the far end of the burrow was cleaned, a new nest was made, and Mrs. Water-rat began to prepare herself for domestic duties. Then it was that Jock strayed out over the land for no particular purpose save sheer joy of living, and while returning saw his enemy the weasel afar off and ran for his life. The weasel pursued, and Jock tumbled into the water six or eight yards in front of his foe. Because he knew less about the weasel's capacities than he thought he did, he was foolish enough to put his head out of the water and address the weasel who stood on the edge of the bank hesitating as to his next movement. Jock, who was firmly persuaded that no weasel could swim, attributed the hesitation to the wrong cause, for as a matter of fact the weasel was only debating whether it was worth while to get wet for the mere sake of killing. He was not hungry enough to need a meal.

"If you could only swim as well as you can run," remarked Jock, "I should be quite afraid of you, you horrid little beast."

"You don't know everything," replied the weasel, preparing to take a header, "and if you swim no better than you run, you haven't much time left to learn in."

With these words he plunged in. Conscious that something was wrong, Jock dived to the bottom and swam as hard and quietly as he could, in search of covert. But the weasel stuck to him, and was never very far behind. In desperation, Jock rose under a little mass of leaves that he had lifted from the bed of the stream, for he knew that his powers of diving were exhausted. Perhaps this little trick might have availed to save him, for the weasel was momentarily baffled, but his sharp eyes soon saw the leaves dispart, he guessed the cause, and Jock fled as Hector may have fled from Achilles round the Walls of Troy. This time he made for his home, and entered the burrow by the newly cleared door in the bank. It was a fatal mistake, for once his feet were on the land the weasel was master of the situation. He caught Jock at the point where the passage opened out by the nest, and killed him instantly with one bite behind the neck. Then he killed Mrs. Water-rat almost as quickly, and hurried away out of the burrow and on to the land feeling very pleased with himself, as he ran swiftly towards the rabbit burrows where he intended to make a fresh kill. So elated was he by the taste of blood, and the consciousness that he had been too quick for his harmless victims, that he ran carelessly in full view of the gamekeeper's son, who was taking his first shooting lessons with a single-barrelled gun. The lad saw the weasel, and took accurate aim, so that the ferocious little animal did not survive his latest victims by more than five minutes. The dead body was picked up and nailed to the branch of the elm tree that served the gamekeeper as his vermin larder, and everybody was glad that the weasel's career was ended.

But the larks that sang their hymns of praise to the sun, and the moorhen that lived so quietly in the reeds, and even the little bats that fluttered about at dusk round the edges of the river mourned Jock's decease, and missed his cheerful presence when they passed the little doorway in the bank, from which he was accustomed to look out over the shining water and greet his many friends.

THE FLAMINGO

Some subtle sense of approaching spring stirred in the breast of the great mute Swan. He could not call aloud, and the low tone in which he spoke to his companion captives would not do justice to the occasion. So he raised himself to his full height, spread his immense wings, and darted across the pond, half-running and half-flying, and creating such a disturbance that the squirrels in the open-air cage some distance off raced to the top of their dead tree to see what was the matter.

On the pond the wigeon drake dived incontinently, and of the pink flamingoes all, save one, sought the banks, where they twisted their long necks into the shape of corkscrews, just to show their indignation. The remaining bird stood on one leg quite unconcerned, his neck in the shape of a capital S. He stared straight before him, and his glance seemed to light upon the excited Swan, and pass through him to some point behind the end of the world. The Swan was annoyed.

"This isn't the time for dreaming," he said, "on a fine April morning when the gardens are beginning to look their best."

"I'm thinking, not dreaming," said the Flamingo quietly.

"What a waste of time," replied the Swan. "When I have nothing to do I preen my feathers. I never think. Isn't this a pretty place; did you ever see anything as charming?"

This was too much for the Flamingo's gravity. He turned his head, hid it in the feathers that covered the middle of his spine, and smiled. Then he withdrew his head, but feeling that some of the smile still lingered, put it down to the ground parallel with his foot.

The Swan looked on admiringly. "You're a funny fellow," he said; "when I saw one of your family for the first time I thought your body and your head were fixed up on stilts. Now I realise that you have a very special allowance of leg and neck. Why?"

"I'm built on special lines in order to realise my peculiar destiny," said the Flamingo stiffly.

"Well, well," replied the Swan, "don't take things so seriously. You're a bit stiff in the leg, but you have a flexible neck, and your tongue ought to match it. Tell me your story, I'm a good listener, and you don't seem to have any friends here among your own companions."

"They are good enough in their way," replied the Flamingo, "but they are all European or American birds. I come from Equatorial Africa, from the land of great rivers, where the crocodiles bask in the mud, and the hippopotamus lives under the water, coming now and again to the surface to fill his lungs with air. Mine is a land of marabous and vultures, of lions and antelopes, of rhinoceros and giraffe. The rarest and strangest creatures kept in the gardens are in a way my companions, but the other flamingoes on this pond can boast no such experiences as mine."

"How come you here, then?" asked the Swan. "If you had a good time in Africa, why leave it?"

"A thing you call a sportsman is to blame," replied the Flamingo. "We were having one of our state processions along the banks of the river, and he came upon us. We had not seen a white man before, and knew nothing of his intentions, but he knew our habits, and crept up so quietly against the wind that when we rose we were not more than thirty yards away from him; he could not resist the temptation of a shot, perhaps because he thought we were good to eat. The flamingo he picked out fell dead, another was hit hard, and I was pricked in the wing by a stray pellet, and picked up before I could run. The sportsman removed the pellet, and clipped my wings, so that I could not fly, and told one of his black boys to feed me well. Then he brought me to his home over the seas, and here I am. Excuse me a moment----"

With this abrupt apology the Flamingo lowered his head and dug his flat upper mandible into the mud below the surface of the water. He took a mouthful of mud and ooze, and then filtered it with the help of his tongue and the little ridges along the edge of the lower mandible. Then he thrust his neck up in curves that gave it the appearance of a serpent's body, and moved both mandibles together as though to sample the flavour of the mud.

"It isn't really to my liking," he said mournfully. "Why, where I was born and bred I'd have had a mouthful of worms, or little frogs, or other delicacies for less than the trouble I've just taken."

"It doesn't really matter," suggested the Swan, "you are fed by the keepers, so you don't go hungry."

"It matters a great deal," persisted the Flamingo. "What makes every creature in this place sick to death? What makes so many die outright? Just the fact that they will be fed at stated hours. There isn't any interest in the business, there isn't any search, there isn't any travel. There have been days when the flamingo army has travelled miles and miles on the wing searching for new feeding grounds, every bird with his eyes wide open, his neck stretched out, his legs hanging straight out behind him. Each one of us, even those in the centre of the wedge, hopes at such a time to be the first to sight a good camping ground. Then the appetite following long hours of travel, the joy of the exercise, and wonder of the sights that we see--strange men, fierce animals, impenetrable forests, and lands where the beasts of the field are rulers and man is of no importance at all.