DUCK-SHOOTING ON THE AVON 215 



not expecting any other, he would rise boldly to the surface. 

 He did rise, within a foot of the little boy, but was so quickly 

 out of sight again, that when asked by me what he had seen, he 

 replied, " a duck." We contrived to keep the otter to the pool 

 till she could stand it no longer, and made an attempt to cross 

 the bank that kept her from the river, a little island, in fact, or 

 nearly so ; but my terrier Smike, the best otter-terrier I ever 

 saw, seized and pinned the otter, and they held each other on 

 the island till an old foxhound came to the rescue and finished 

 the matter. Parts of the banks of these rivers are so high as 

 to amount to cliffs in some places, and the banks are so hollowed 

 out by floods, that the otters bid defiance to a pack of hounds, 

 and it is impossible to keep them from their holts long enough 

 to beat them. The otters are, therefore, trapped on every 

 possible occasion, the best trapper being a servant in the em- 

 ployment of Mr. Farr, whose house stands immediately on the 

 bank of the Stour, near Christchurch. 



On a very cold snowy morning, the sleet driving before a 

 northerly wind as sharp and hard as powdered glass, the ditches 

 filled with snow, and the roads opposite every gateway or shard 

 in the hedge thwarted by drift, stained by dust from the 

 ploughed lands, I set off to meet Lord Malmsbury at the Queen 

 public-house, at Avon, to shoot wild-fowl on the river of that 

 name. All the little boys that met me on the way had blue 

 cheeks and red noses, and were muffled to the chin with worsted 

 comforters, truants in some cases tarrying from school to slide 

 on the ponds, or, most unnecessarily, on the foot-paths, to the 

 great risk of falls among red-cloaked old women. There was 

 not a sparrow on the cottage thatch, where the chimney's 

 warmth had thawed the snow, that did not seem to have his 

 greatcoat on, so bluffed were the feathers ; and not a frozen-out 

 duck who did not glance up at the pendent icicles on the roof, 

 and seem to be putting up a prayer for rain. Farmyards 

 looked comfortable in their deep straw newly flung from the 

 barn-doors; and pigs thatched themselves with it while they 

 rooted beneath for any fallen grain. Cocks and hens sat under 



