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Swine Park moon was waning and the low mist was growing white, the otters returned to play a strange game. It was begun by White-tip making a splash before Tarka, to make sure that he would see her leave the water and climb the bank. When he followed, she ran around the meadow and back again, passing close by, but not once looking at him. After a while, they went back to the pill and romped like porpoises. Then they ran up the bank together and wandered off alone, up and down, passing and repassing many times through the squares of the wire fencing, without recognition or purpose, as though they were both mazed. To the water once more, a drink and a search for eels, and again the strange play in the meadow.

Each was pretending not to see the other; so happy were they to be together, that they were trying to recover the keen joy of meeting.

On the seventh round White-tip ran near a young pig that, on sniffing her scent, jumped and grunted and squealed and then stood still. Every black jowl lifted from the pleasant garbage. Hot ears ceased to flap. White-tip moved, and ten pigs jumped, and squealed, and hurriedly bolted. The sow, a ponderous and careful animal with eyes sunken in fat, that had eaten two rats and a cat besides twenty pounds of other food that night, pointed her ringed snout at the troublesome smell and moved her big shaking body towards it. White-tip threatened her, oaring Is-iss-iss! If the sow had caught her. White-tip would have been eaten by sunrise, since she weighed only fourteen pounds and the