They carried the body back to the farm, where the farmer drew a pint of ale for each of his helpers from the XXXX barrel in the cellar. While they were drinking "Best respects, Varmer," the collie dog began to bark, and as it would not stop after several cries of "Shut that rattle, you," the farmer went out and gave it a kick in the ribs. The collie yelped and went to kennel, but hardly had the farmer gone into his kitchen again when it set up a furious barking. It was banged on the head with the stag's horn handle of a hunting whip, but even this did not check its desire to tell its master that an enemy was in the yard. It kept up an intermittent barking until the dawn, when it was flogged with its head wedged in the door. The farmer was a poor man and not very strong, and a sleepless night made him irritable. When he felt better he gave the dog the skinned carcass of the otter, and praised its courage and virtue in the Railway Inn, telling how it had warned him and how it had tracked the "girt mousey-coloured fitches" to the shed, where one escaped through a hole behind the sacks. He forebore to say how noisy his dog had been afterwards, deeming this a point not in its favour, for how was he, his natural senses dulled by civilization, to have known that an otter had remained all night in the farmyard, waiting for the mate that never came. * * * * * Tarka was gone in the mist and rain of the day, to hide among the reeds of the marsh pond--the sere and icicled reeds, which now could sink to their ancestral ooze and sleep, perchance to dream;--of sun-stored summers raising the green stems, of wind-shaken anthers dropping gold pollen over June's young maces, of seeds shaped and clasped and taught by the brown autumn mother. The south wind was breaking from the great roots the talons of the Icicle Spirit, and freeing ten thousand flying seeds in each brown head. Water covered the pond ice, deep enough to sail a feather, and at night every hoof-hole held its star. After seven sunrisings the mosses were green on the hillocks, lapwings tumbled and dived and cried their sweet mating cries, the first flower bloomed in the Burrows--the lowly vernal whitlow grass, with its tiny white petals on a single leafless stalk. Under the noon sun sheep grazing in the marsh had silver outlines. Linnets sat on the lighthouse telegraph wire, wing to wing, and talking to the sky. Out of the auburn breasts fell ravishing notes, like glowing strokes of colour in the warm south wind.