head was raised; he listened and swam to the bank. Hounds spoke remotely; he knew Deadlock’s tongue among them. He climbed out of the leat, the trout still in his mouth, and pushed through the undergrowth, among nettles and marsh-wort, and over soft damp ground. Robins ticked at him, wrens stittered. Burrs and seeds tried to hook to his hair, finding no hold. Warble flies tried to alight on his back and suck his blood; the rushes brushed them off. He ran in a loop back to the leat, and slipped into the water above the hounds, who had gone down. He swam up for a quarter of a mile, then rested by an alder root and listened to the pack running over his land-trail. He looked round fora stone whereon to eat the fish, but hearing Deadlock’s tongue, he lay still.
From the wooded hillside above the distant bank of the river came the knock of axes on the trunk of an oak tree, the shouts of woodmen, a sudden crack, the hissing rush and thud of breaking branches, and then quietness, until began the steady knocks of boughs being lopped. After a while Tarka did not hear these sounds—he was listening in another direction. He scarcely heard the shooting buzz of sun-frisked flies over the leat. He felt no fear; all his energy was in listening.
Chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff sang the bird among the ash trees. And soon the voices of men, the tearing of brambles against coats, boots trampling and snapping the hollow green stalks of hog-weed and hemlock. Tarka saw their heads and shoulders against the sky, and swam on up the leat.
