22 ON THE FLOOD. 
big, gaunt, scarred, leering, fiendish old buck- 
rat, holding brutally the large root-end against 
all comers so far. 
From time to time a bird swooped down, 
seeking a rest on the limbs of the old tree, 
flung up like arms; but after viewing its 
silent, joyless freight, it fluttered for a space, 
and went away again. 
Now, too, the bloated corpse of a sheep 
or a bullock came by and challenged them 
to an unlovely race; and once they fouled a 
telegraph-wire and a railway-signal, nearly 
jarring a horrified cat who held the top of it 
off into a watery death, and all but founder- 
ing themselves hopelessly in the stress of 
waters. 
At noon the weasel essayed to creep along 
the narrow bough to one of the bank-voles ; 
but the little red vole dropped cleverly to a 
lower twig, and the released bough shot the 
murderous one incontinently into the air, so 
that he was given a bath, and a desperate two 
minutes before he could return to his place 
again. 
Half-an-hour later the squirrel cantered 
along the main stem, driving the fat, nervous 
water-rat_ before him, till both were stopped 
by the apparition of the old buck-rat, thrown 
into his most approved fighting position. 
