A dark cloud arose over the crest of the oakwood, and the greenery of young leaves faded. Rain beat on the flags. A million million drops in the river leapt to meet the drops fresh-risen from the Atlantic. The cloud passed, and again the meadow was hot and bright. The swallows flew up the river, quitting at the coils its glitter and yellow kingcups, and fleeing on across the green meadow to the road by the bridge. Here, in the hollows of the broken road surface, was to be found after rain a greyish mud that set harder than the browny mud of the salty scourings in the river. Only by the bridge was this mud to be found, for the road sloped up and down over the river, and the slopes were not tarred, lest the feet of horses slip. The aerial masons were about to build their nests on the rafters of shippen and barn; they flew in pairs, singing their sun-songs. Beside the bridge grew an elderberry tree, straight and sturdy as a young oak in a park; one of the few soft-cored elderberry trees in the country of the Two Rivers that had not grown up a cripple of the winds. Its leaves partly hid a motor-car, in whose closed body, shut away from the wind and the sun of the English spring, sat some men and women. They were awaiting hounds before moving to the parapet of the bridge, and perhaps, if a kill seemed certain and early, to the meadow over the low wooden fence. Other motor-cars stopped on the bridge. The swallows swooping over the stonework saw the sunlight browned by the smoke of engines, and dived back again over the grass. The baying of hounds above the bridge became louder, for the otter had swam through the lower stickle, and was travelling downstream. The hunted otter was White-tip. She had been chased for nearly three hours. Always the cries and tongues and legs had followed her, up the pools and down the pools, from holt to holding, from holding to shallow. _Tally Ho!_ She saw faces and waving arms above the bridge, but she did not turn back. * * * * * Light-laden drops rolled down the green flags as their points drew down the sky. Tarka lay still, watching. They rustled and broke with soft sappy noises. White-tip was pressing through the bed of flags. Her mouth was open. Tarka, who had been listening for half an hour to the distant cries of men and hounds, stared at the movement. A sudden clamour ran down the river, loud and startling, for Deadlock had found White-tip's deep seals in the mud, where she had crept out of the water. The two otters ran through the flags and slid down the mud to the river again. Tarka spread himself in the shallow flow, moving with light touches of claws just over the rocks and stones of the bed. He moved slowly, as an eel moves, as smooth as the water, and with sinuous ease. Sometimes he crept out at the edge of the mud, walked a few yards, and slipped back into the water again. Hounds were crushing the flags around his bed, and throwing their tongues along his line.