When she returned, her mate was with her. They soared above the tarn. Sometimes the cock raven shut his wings, rolled sideways, and twirled on open wings again. _Krok-krok!_ he said to the hen, seeing below the form of the swimming otter, darker than the dark tarn. The raven opened his beak wide, set his wings for descent, and croaked _kron-n-n-n-n-k_ during the slow, dipping swoop, in the curve of a scythe, from one green-lined margin to the other. Then he tumbled and twirled, alighting on the slope of the hill, and walked down to the water to catch frogs. Several times each day the two ravens flew to the tarn. The cockbird talked to Tarka whenever he saw him, and pestered him when he was sunning himself on the bank. He would hop to within a few feet of him, with a frog in his beak, and drop it just to windward of Tarka's nose. Once, when Tarka was playing with a frog and had turned his back on it for a moment, the raven picked it up and threw it to one side. Bird and otter played together, but they never touched one another. The raven, who was one of the three hundred sons of Kronk, would drop a stick into the tarn and Tarka would swim after it, bringing it to the bank and rolling with it between his paws. Occasionally the raven slyly pinched his rudder, and Tarka would run at him, tissing through his teeth. With flaps and hops the raven dodged him, flying up out of his way only when driven to water. Day after day Tarka slept in the rushes in the morass at the north end of the tarn. Unless he was tired after the nightly prowl, the _kron-n-n-n-k_ of the zooming raven would always wake him, and he would either run along the bank or swim by the reeds to play with the bird. One morning five ravens flew over the tarn, the hen leading three smaller ravens in line and the father behind them--a black constellation of Orion. They lit on the turf of the dam. The youngsters sat on the bank and watched their mother dapping for frogs. Tarka ran along the bank, amid guttural squawks and cronks, to play with them, but the parents stabbed at him with their beaks, beating wings in his face, and hustling him back to water. They flew over him when he bobbed for breath, and worried him so persistently that he never again went near a raven.