64 THE LIFE STORY OF AN OTTER 



regard of danger in a creature both suspicious 

 and apprehensive, yet not difficult of explanation. 

 For all the demesne within the park wall had 

 long been a sanctuary for bird and beast. Not a 

 gun had been fired there nor a trap set time out 

 of mind ; and so confiding had even otters become 

 that they used the drain on the island to litter 

 in, and would lay up in the holt by the moat 

 under the very windows of the mansion. 



Behind one of these a light had just before 

 been burning, where the young squire sat record- 

 ing the day's sport with his hounds along the 

 stream in which the otter had taught the cubs 

 to fish. But as he wrote he heard the otter 

 whistle. On the instant he dropped his pen, 

 turned down the lamp and, seizing a field-glass, 

 took his seat by the open window. Keen otter- 

 hunter as he was, he was no less keen a naturalist. 

 Deer, foxes, badgers, seals, all interested him, 

 though not to the same degree as the otter. The 

 fascination this creature had for him was wonder- 

 ful. To him it was the homeless hunter, the 

 Bedouin of the wild, the subtlest and most 

 enduring of quarry, the gamest of the game. 

 Therefore he sat with glass to eye watching the 

 lighted space between two clumps of rhodo- 

 dendrons where he expected the otters would 



