The fast, shrill cry got here from a silver element drawing a ruddy line over the dust. With a fish in its beak the kingfisher sped upriver to its younger in a sandy financial institution above the Mouse gap Pool. Martins twittered alongside the river-bank, and hovered concerning the heads of bullocks, taking crisp-winged flies from their muzzles and among their horns. Tarka yawned, and dozed back. a depressing cloud arose over the crest of the oakwood, and the greenery of younger leaves light. Rain beat at the flags. one million million drops within the river leapt to satisfy the drops fresh-risen from the Atlantic. The cloud handed, and back the meadow used to be sizzling and shiny. The swallows flew up the river, quitting on the coils its glitter and yellow kingcups, and fleeing on around the eco-friendly meadow to the line through the bridge. right here, within the hollows of the damaged highway floor, used to be to be stumbled on after rain a greyish dust that set tougher than the browny dust of the salty scourings within the river. simply by way of the bridge used to be this dust to be came across, for the line sloped up and down over the river, and the slopes weren't tarred, lest the ft of horses slip. The aerial masons have been approximately to construct their nests at the rafters of shippen and barn; they flew in pairs, making a song their sun-songs. Beside the bridge grew an elderberry tree, directly and durable as a tender oak in a park; one of many few soft-cored elderberry timber within the nation of the 2 Rivers that had no longer grown up a cripple of the winds. Its leaves partially concealed a motor-car, in whose closed physique, close clear of the wind and the sunlight of the English spring, sat a few women and men. They have been watching for hounds ahead of relocating to the parapet of the bridge, and maybe, if a kill appeared yes and early, to the meadow over the low wood fence. different motor-cars stopped at the bridge. The swallows swooping over the stonework observed the daylight browned by means of the smoke of engines, and dived again back over the grass. The baying of hounds above the bridge grew to become louder, for the otter had swum in the course of the reduce stickle, and was once vacationing downstream. The hunted otter was once White-tip. She were chased for almost 3 hours. consistently the cries and tongues and legs had her, up the swimming pools and down the swimming pools, from holt to conserving, from preserving to shallow. Tally Ho! She observed faces and waving palms above the bridge, yet she didn't flip again. Light-laden drops rolled down the golf green flags as their issues drew down the sky. Tarka lay nonetheless, observing. They rustled and broke with gentle sappy noises. White-tip was once urgent the mattress of flags. Her mouth used to be open. Tarka, who were listening for part an hour to the far away cries of guys and hounds, stared on the stream. A unexpected clamour ran down the river loud and startling, for impasse had came across White-tip’s deep seals within the dust, the place she had crept out of the water. the 2 otters ran in the course of the flags and slid down the dust to the river back. Tarka unfold himself within the shallow move, relocating with mild touches of claws simply over the rocks and stones of the mattress. He moved slowly, as an eel strikes, as delicate because the water, and with sinuous ease.