THE WATER-HEN 
quite thin, and her breast-feathers were worn 
with much shifting over the eggs. Karruck 
sat beside her until sunset, and then swam over 
to supper on the marshwort beds. There was 
a bramble bush close to the bank, and Karruck 
did not notice that the hedgesparrow who 
owned it, flew out with a lamentable chirp. 
However, the vixen sprang the fraction of a 
minute too soon, and her teeth snapped just 
behind Karruck's tail as he scudded away. 
Cearc-uise tumbled off her nest and hid under 
the bank. The vixen plunged belly deep into 
mud and water, but picked herself out daintily 
and hopped back to covert. The Pool rippled to 
placidity again, and then, although she was badly 
frightened, Cearc-uise remembered her cool- 
ing eggs, and paddled slowly towards the nest. 
It was dusk under the alder. Cearc-uise was just 
about to clamber inside when she suddenly saw 
the vixen on the bank above. Cearc-uise sank 
her body low in the water until it looked like 
a piece of floating wood, and tried to paddle 
herself gently into safety, but a tell-tale ripple 
spread along the surface, and the vixen's quick 
eye saw it. She whimpered, and stretching side- 
ways, tried to reach the bird without slipping 
into the water herself. Cearc-uise took a header, 
and so passed from under her jaws by the way of 
the cool underwater world to the alder's shade. 
'3 
