Page:Life Story of an Otter.djvu/118

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THE LIFE STORY OF AN OTTER

of turf, he came to a sudden standstill. It seemed as if he had caught some suspicious sound along the back trail, for his head was suddenly turned that way; but, discerning nothing, he resumed his brisk trot along the bank that at this point rose high above the rushing river. Soon he came to the tributary down which his mother had led him and, swimming Moor Pool, as the meeting of the waters is called, he crossed to the opposite bank and kept it till he reached the troubled 'Kieve' at the base of the hill. As though haunted by the memory of the hounds, he again looked back over the moor, now black under the stars; but in the end, after peering long and satisfying himself that no enemy followed his trail, he slipped into the foaming basin in search of the trout it contained, and on two of these fish made a hurried supper before beginning the climb of the great cone that towered grim and forlorn above him. He kept close to the wild, headlong stream, and made the ascent by scrambling up the rocks that abutted on fall and cascade. Far, far up, his nostrils caught the scent of a body of water, and in his eagerness to reach it he redoubled his pace and soon gained the crest. There he found himself face to face with a tarn—a tarn of aspect as forbidding as