It was a beautiful starlight night when he came to the brow overlooking it, and sat down to gaze at the mill, the pool above it, and the glimpses of stream showing in the gorse like silver stitched on black velvet. A will o’ the wisp was flitting to and fro near the bend of the valley, and a white owl was searching the stubble before the miller’s cottage; otherwise nothing stirred; so presently the leveret made his way down and down the rugged hillside to the stream. This he followed as far as the mill-pool; then, after glancing round the rushy margin, he retraced his steps and crossed the stream below the mill. Sometimes along the bank, sometimes within a stone’s throw as the bushes allowed, he held on to the swampy ground where the weird light still floated hither and thither and, passing between patches of iris and watermint, came to some mounds carpeted with thyme, on which he remained to feed. From there he overlooked a sheet of water, half-circled with alders, a fowler’s hut peeping from beneath a cluster of them. No bird rested on the water, which was marked only by the rings made by trout rising at the white moths that came within their reach. It was a very peaceful scene, with no breath of wind to diffuse the scent given out by meadow-sweet and camomile. The hungry fellow nibbled unceasingly at the aromatic herb, avoiding the glow-worms which dotted the mounds. On the furze they were even more numerous, so that their golden-green lamps lit up the beads of dew on the spiders’ webs. But the leveret rarely interrupted his feast to look about him; only once did he scratch his ears, and whilst so engaged had his attention attracted by a shrill whistle from the stream below the pool. Turning his head, he saw an otter and two cubs come over the bank which dammed the pool, and enter the water with so little disturbance as to make them seem uncanny. When they dived, their progress would have been most difficult to follow had it not been for the leaping of the trout, for the waves they raised were hardly noticeable even where the water was shallowest. The otters rose at different parts of the pool, each with a trout in its mouth, swam to the bank, and there lay at full length to devour their take. After fishing for nearly half an hour the animals fell to playing, now in the water, now on the bank, at times even in the open spaces among the bushes. From one of these the cubs espied the leveret. At once ceasing their gambols, they watched him nibble the herbage, their nostrils working all the time. The leveret, who showed no fear of the strange, short-legged creatures, was still feeding when the otter recalled her cubs and led them up the stream, but he was nearly satisfied, and shortly made his way along the dam and up the opposite hill to the downs, over which he kept wandering and wandering as if in search of a seat. Yet this was not his object. He had already made up his mind where he would pass the coming day, took the