Page:Life Story of an Otter.djvu/159

Rh as she was, her lot was preferable to that of the otter, with cubs wholly dependent on her; for it seemed impossible to support them unless the frost should soon relent.

Shut off from the mere and the stream that fed it, the night after the closing of the ice the otters turned to the land and quested wherever cover afforded prospect of finding prey. They threaded the reeds and furze-brake, they drew the two osier-beds and tussocky ground between them, but met with nothing save a few dead starlings, from whose sorry skeletons they turned away, hungry though they were. On the next night the hard-set creatures made their way along the stream until they came to the solitary homestead in the heart of the western moor. There they left the ice, clambered up the high bank, and climbed the farmyard wall to the cart-shed, where, standing on their hind-legs, they examined the crannies in the wall for snails, but found none. Coming out, they skirted the pig-sty, passed between an alder-tree and the lighted window, and just as they rounded the corner of the house, found themselves almost face to face with a white cat. Savage torn though he was, he never thought of fighting. In a twinkling he was in full retreat, with both otters at his heels.