‘No, no, my man, not on any account. The otter deserves his life. We’ll leave him for another season, and I hope we may meet again.’
Little did he dream that the game beast which had baffled his best efforts was to become the talk of the country-side, and would for many a day disappoint his hopes and flout his plans.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OTTER AND HIS MATE
Rather more than a year has passed since the hunt. The vegetation then in flower, after blooming again, has lost its glory, and is now withering and dying. In the marsh the reeds are sapless, the flags stained by decay, the tall-stemmed flowering plants shrivelled to skeletons, disarray and discoloration appear everywhere, save perhaps in the velvet spikes of the mace-reed, whose hue yet rivals in its rich umber the pelt of the otter curled up below them on the spot where he lay in the days of rebellious cubhood. But what a huge fellow he has grown! Fine whelp though he was, he has developed beyond all promise, and there is not an otter on his rounds that can compare with him. He is inches longer and pounds heavier even than his father, and it is little wonder that he should have attracted the notice of sportsmen and become the talk of the country-side. For though since he reached his prime no one has caught more than a glimpse of him, yet keeper, bailiff and moorman have all come on his footprints and given such reports of their size that interest has become widespread and people have flocked from far and near to the meets in the hope of seeing him found and hunted.
No one was more interested than the squire, but he succeeded in concealing the excitement he felt, unless, perhaps, it showed in his very caustic language to the field at the least tendency to press the hounds; and when the season ended without the otter being accounted for, no one save his wife and the old butler knew his disappointment. But disappointed he was; and indeed it was almost inexplicable that the hounds should not have chanced on the otter, for he kept to the usual trails and kennelled in the well-known holts. Once they followed his line to the creek, but there, owing to the rising tide, the pursuit had to be abandoned. At another time they actually drew over him where he lay far in under the bank out of mark.
Yet if he bore a charmed life to hunter and hound, he was not fortunate enough to keep quite clear of the other perils that beset him. After having long avoided traps set here and there on his path, he was caught when about fourteen months old by a gin laid in a shallow, and he carried the cruel engine about with him for three days before the chain became so entangled in an alder-root that he was able to wrench himself free. Soon after he was shot at by old Ikey, the wild-fowler, in the channel connecting the Big and the Little Liddens. His quickness in diving at the flash alone saved him, for the man was a dead shot. One night he came on a gang of poachers ‘burning the reed’ in the pool below the morass, and stood to watch them, fascinated by the flare that lit up the excited faces bending over the water. But though scared by the sight of his enemies, he went only a short distance out of his way to avoid them, and soon after was chasing a salmon in Moor Pool, killing in time to make a hurried meal and reach the tarn before dawn.
Long, arduous and generally vain was his pursuit of the fresh-run fish; but, mighty hunter that he was, he was successful now and then, and enjoyed a hard-earned feast.
It was after such an achievement that the bailiff stood a-stare at his tracks, and shouted to the miller to come down to him. ‘What do ’ee think of it?’ he asked. ‘Think of it?’ said the miller, who had noticed only the remains of the otter’s banquet, ‘think of it? You didn’t holloa like that for an old fish, did ’ee? I thought somebody was drow——’ Before he could finish the word he saw and, understanding, added in a changed tone: ‘Well, well, they prents beat all I ever did see. I’d give a sack of bests to clap eyes on the varmint as left ’em. Where’s a lyin’, wonder. Anywheres handy, do ’ee think?’
‘It’s a safe offer you’re making, William Richard. You’ll nae see the canny vagabond the day. He’s no couching near the kill, I’m thinking, but miles and miles awa’—at Lone Tarn, maybe, or by the Leeddens. That print’—and he pointed to a footmark half in and half out of the water—‘seems to say he was travelling up-water.’