Page:Life Story of an Otter.djvu/102

74 moor. On, on the untiring creatures sped, more like agents of darkness executing some urgent commission than beasts of prey speeding to a new fishing-ground. Mile after mile of the desolate upland they traversed: at one spot skirting a cairn whence came that weirdest of all wild cries, the shrill chattering of badgers; at another, passing the only road over the moor, where they left their footprints between the fresh wheel-marks of the doctor's trap. A sleeping hamlet rose almost in their path, and so close did they approach that they heard the creaking of the signboard of the Druid's Arms, about which the cottages cluster. Then over wall after wall they clambered as they came to the crofters' holdings, reached the lodge of the keeper who had been the otter's terror when her cubs were helpless, gained the edge of the moorland above the old nursery, made their way down the very gully along which the hounds had followed the fox and, leaping the stream close to the hover, came out on the salmon pool beyond the poplar.

Eager to see whether the pool held a fish, the otter slipped into the water and swam to the favourite lie near the foot of the fall. A salmon was there, and towards it she advanced so swiftly