WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
Dark Pool is properly a very silent place, and 
its glass-black surface inviolate from hour to 
hour, the badgers, harvesting moss on the hill, 
snuffled with astonishment one March night 
when they heard a moorhen take seizin of the 
water. And this was the fashion of it. He 
crossed it from end to end with a flourish, and 
landed under the alder-tree rocking upon 
waves of his own raising. Then, after a pause 
to add to the effect, he cried aloud his name 
far and near : " Karruck ! " The badgers 
heard it : the white owl heard it : the lusty 
west wind caught it and whirled it along the 
hillside as far as the fox earth in Grenogue 
Wood ; and there the vixen slinking into her 
newly dug " earth " heard it, and pricked up 
her ears. Thus the woods learned that the 
moorhen had taken possession of the Pool once 
more, for that is his way of staking his claim. 
II 
* 
The rats, grooming their whiskered faces out- 
side their holes next morning, looked askance 
at the newcomer, for it was a long time since 
their peace had been disturbed. Karruck took 
breakfast among the floating crowfoot, and then 
studied his surroundings. There was already 
bloom on the blackthorns on the hill, but down 
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