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Beam Pool patches was damp with water run. off hounds’ flews, flanks, and sterns. Only a carrion crow saw them hastening across the meadow to the leat, and its croaks followed them into the wood, where bees were burring round purple spires of foxgloves, and chiffchaffs flitted through honey-suckle bines. Otter and cubs passed low and swift among the green seed-heads of the bluebells; and uphill over blackening leaves, until they saw the river again below them, where the sunpoints glittered, and a young kingfisher drew a blue line in the shade of oak trees.