the wet ground where they had been sleeping, and crossing a road, came to a boggy tract where curlew and snipe lived. Tarka ran over the line of a hare, and followed it in curiosity until his mother called him back. Mosses made the way soft and held many scents—of marsh orchid, stinking iris, bog pimpernel; of wild duck, stoat, short-eared owl, magpie, and, once, the rank-smelling flight-quill of a raven.
They reached a thread of water and followed it downward until it was joined by another thread. The two made a stream, which hastened under whitish banks of clay. The otter sought for fish, but finding none, climbed out of the channel by a slanting otter-path and crossed the railway track near a tall, dark chimney that rose out of buildings. It was a brick factory. An otter had travelled before them, and in a hollow behind birch trees about a quarter of a mile on they heard a whistle; and running towards the call, they came to a deep reed-fringed pond, on the clay side of which a grown dog-otter was playing with the wings of a drake. Tarka kept behind his mother, being frightened of the stranger. He had a split ear, done in a fight two years before. Mother and cubs went into the pond, leaving him rolling on the bank and tossing the wings with his paws.
The pond was an old pit from which white clay had been dug. The water was deeper than any the cubs had swum in. Round the edge grew reed-maces; it was early June and the wind-shaken anthers were dropping the yellow pollen on the juicy heads which would pass, with
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