THE WATER- HEN 
to those who understood it, it may have talked 
of the fox's former raids, and of how any 
moorhen who wintered on the Pool never saw 
New Year's Day. And all the while the 
blackthorn bushes, which afforded the fox such 
safe covert for his hunting, sang wicked little 
songs as the wind blew through them. But 
Karruck did not hear, because by that time he 
was in the rushes with Cearc-uise. 
IV 
They built the first nest at the deeper end of 
the Pool, among some drooping branches. The 
evening on which the first egg was laid they 
fed together up the streamside, and just 
returned in time to see the magpie depart with 
their treasure transfixed on his bill. Cearc- 
uise grieved a great deal, but she laid another 
in the same nest, and the magpie stole that one 
also. However, on the third day the thief 
went to join some of his relations, who swung 
on a tree behind the gamekeeper's cottage ; but 
Cearc-uise was much too scared to use that 
nest again, and so they planned another. This 
time they chose the alder at the east side of the 
Pool, in order that its branches might to a 
certain extent screen their nest from passing 
thieves. All the time that the nest was being built 
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