WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
There she took breath under cover of a lump 
of flotsam, and hid until the vixen had shaken 
herself and trotted away up the stream. 
But, long after she was dozing on her eggs 
again, the water gurgled as if it were laughing 
to itself as it smoothed out the little pits which 
the vixen's pads had pressed in the mud. 
There were four hungry cubs in the " earth " 
in Grenogue Wood that spring, and as their 
mother licked the mud off her coat that night 
she determined to hunt by the Pool again. 
Therefore she went by starlight the next night, 
and Cearc-uise saw her steal down to the 
water's edge and gauge the distance to the nest. 
The alder jutted out like a crooked elbow, 
padded with moss and black mould, and the 
Pool had been full of water for so long that the 
trunk was almost submerged. The nest was 
about six feet from the bank, and built solidly; 
but whereas on the previous day the waterline 
had reached to within a few inches of the brim, 
to-day it had fallen a little. The vixen put her 
forepads on the alder trunk, whispering a little 
at the cold water. Cearc-uise flung herself off 
the nest and tried the old pretence of threshing 
the water with a wounded wing, and the vixen, 
H 
