LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 



higher banks covered with a dense growth of 

 young pines, the tracks were much more numer- 

 ous and wandered farther from the water at times, 

 showing where the otter had been nosing about 

 rabbit holes and beneath decaying logs ; and here 

 it was joined by another much more recently 

 made, which I followed until I felt sure from the 

 appearance of the trodden snow that the otter 

 could be only a very few minutes ahead of me. 

 So I stopped and waited motionless, hoping 

 to get sight of the animal. In perhaps twenty 

 minutes an otter came to the surface of the water 

 hardly thirty yards away, and came swimming 

 almost directly towards me with the whole out- 

 line of his head, back, and tail straight and level 

 with the water, reminding me of a piece of drift- 

 wood pushed along rapidly by the current. After 

 swimming for a few yards, he sank out of sight, 

 but almost immediately poked his head up again 

 through the soft ice still nearer, and for a little 

 while busied himself wallowing about in the 



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