86 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



stop him, but he dived past the stick and got 

 away where he wanted to be in the wood, and I 

 resumed my seat. 



There was the toad, when I looked his way, just 

 about where I had last seen him, within perhaps a 

 few inches. Then a turtle-dove flew down, alighting 

 within a yard of the water, and after eyeing me 

 suspiciously for a few moments advanced and took 

 one long drink and flew away. A few minutes later 

 I heard a faint complaining and whining sound in 

 or close to the hedge on my left hand, and turning 

 my eyes in that direction caught sight of a stoat, 

 his head and neck visible, peeping at me out of the 

 wood ; he was intending to cross the road, and seeing 

 me sitting there hesitated to do so. Still having 

 come that far he would not turn back, and by and 

 by he drew himself snake -like out of the concealing 

 herbage, and was just about to make a dash across 

 the road when I tapped sharply on the wood with 

 my stick and he fled back into cover. In a few 

 seconds he appeared again, and I played the same 

 trick on him with the same result ; this was 

 repeated about four times, after which he plucked 

 up courage enough to make his dash and was 

 quickly lost in the coarse grass by the stream on 

 the other side. 



Then a curious thing happened : flop, flop, flop, 

 went vole following vole, escaping madly from their 

 hiding-places along the bank into the water, all 

 swimming for dear life to the other side of the 

 stream. Their deadly enemy did not swim after 



