WILD CREATURES OF GARDEN AND HEDGEROW 



for anything else. In the meantime the 

 desperate vole will go anywhere and do any- 

 thing to try and throw off the weasel ; it will 

 cross broad highroads, dash across the open in 

 front of onlookers, and even take to the water 

 and swim streams and ponds. Once I saw a 

 field vole dash across a road almost under 

 the wheels of a pony trap. The driver 

 stopped the pony, and we waited and watched 

 to see what would happen; a second later a 

 weasel appeared running along the fence at 

 the side of the road, from which it jumped 

 down into the ditch, hunted up and down the 

 muddy bottom for a moment, picked up the 

 scent, and with its nose to the ground sprang 

 out on to the grass that edged the highway, 

 where it hesitated for a moment, cast itself 

 in a circle as a huntsman casts a pack of fox- 

 hounds, recovered the line, and, paying no 

 more attention to us than if we had not existed, 

 bounded across the road with that curious 

 light dancing movement peculiar to stoats and 

 weasels. It disappeared on the farther side 

 into the long uncut grass of the ditch. All 

 was still, not even a grass blade quivered, and 

 we thought the hunter and hunted had gone, 

 but just as we were moving away something 

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