86 THE LIFE STORY OF AN OTTER 



of turf, he came to a sudden standstill. It 

 seemed as if he had caught some suspicious 

 sound along the back trail, for his head was sud- 

 denly turned that way ; but, discerning nothing, 

 he resumed his brisk trot along the bank that 

 at this point rose high above the rushing river. 

 Soon he came to the tributary down which his 

 mother had led him and, swimming Moor Pool, 

 as the meeting of the waters is called, he crossed 

 to the opposite bank and kept it till he reached 

 the troubled * Kieve ' at the base of the hill. As 

 though haunted by the memory of the hounds, 

 he again looked back over the moor, now black 

 under the stars ; but in the end, after peering 

 long and satisfying himself that no enemy fol- 

 lowed his trail, he slipped into the foaming basin 

 in search of the trout it contained, and on two of 

 these fish made a hurried supper before begin- 

 ning the climb of the great cone that towered 

 grim and forlorn above him. He kept close to 

 the wild, headlong stream, and made the ascent 

 by scrambling up the rocks that abutted on fall 

 and cascade. Far, far up, his nostrils caught the 

 scent of a body of water, and in his eagerness to 

 reach it he redoubled his pace and soon gained 

 the crest. There he found himself face to face 

 with a tarn — a tarn of aspect as forbidding as 



