conscience is rather too sensitive, and at times possibly he carries the work of finishing and polishing to excess; but before we can find fault he wins us back by such a touch as this: “He (the otter) rolled, shook himself, and set off again, roaming round the fen until he heard again the cry of running water. The cry came out of a hollow whose sides were scarred by the sliding of broken hummocks, the faint cry of a river new born.”
The spirit of Dartmoor and of Exmoor is, above all, the spirit of the waters, and to Mr. Williamson it is a spirit so familiar as to have become a part of himself. He loves the air, as witness his pictures of raven and peregrine and other birds. He loves the earth, as testify his studies of fitch and fox and badger. But above all he loves the water—afresh, brackish, salt; mist, rain, snow, ice—he follows it lovingly in all its forms. For him, I think, as for some others of us the Spirit of God still moves, as before the creation, upon the face of the waters.
And now it is time for me to drop Mr. Williamson’s hand as a leader, and leave him to guide his readers over moor and fen and meadow, over land and stream and sea, in the track of Tarka the Otter. I have been privileged to follow him earlier than other men; and if all shall find the journey as full of interest and joy as myself, then our author will have made for us a happier and more beautiful world, a world in which we can seek refuge among the toils and the worries of life, and be thankful.
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