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22 Giant's Quoits, first the otter and then the cubs caught the voice of the stream. The low murmur was almost lost in the sigh of the night wind, but grew louder and louder, till soon chattering run and plashing cascade appeared in the dip below.

On reaching the pool, the otter entered the water with the cubs at her side, dived, and drove the trout to the shelter of the banks. Thereupon the cubs, who saw where the fish had fled, fell to drawing the hovers, thrusting their flat heads into hole and crevice as far as they could reach. But the trout had found secure recesses, and though a few felt the lips of the otters, they could not be seized, and all but one escaped. In the pool at the bend, however, where the bank, hollowed though it is, affords poor shelter, three were taken. Then the captors, two on the gravel, the other on a mid-stream boulder, lay at full length and ate their prey, munching ravenously. The otter seemed to have set aside her fears since reaching the moor, for never once did she trouble to listen or even to scan the sable waste around her. All her thoughts were for the cubs, whom she led from pool to pool, aiding them until they began to fish for themselves; then she stood aside and watched them.