THE MATING OF BROWNIE 193 
found himself thinking harder than ever of the 
otters he had met on the long trip the season be- 
fore. He was full grown now, a fine, sleek fel- 
low, and he had a sudden great desire to see those 
otters again, to play with them, to be with them, 
or with one of them, at any rate. He confided 
his plans to nobody, not even his mother, which 
proves that he was a regular young fellow, now. 
But early one morning he started out, all alone, 
over the long trail. 
Though he had made the trip but once before, 
and partly in the dark, he had no doubts about the 
way, finding the track as a woodsman or an In- 
dian follows his dim blazes in the forest. No fox 
molested him now, for he was too large for a fox 
to risk a contest. But, as he was descending on 
the farther side of the divide, he heard a hound 
baying on his track, and though he hurried as fast 
as his short legs would carry him, the dog was up 
before he could reach water. Brownie instinc- 
tively backed up against a flat-sided boulder, and 
let the dog come on. As the dog closed in, quite 
unconscious of what he was tackling, Brownie 
reared his powerful neck with incredible speed, 
