‘Iss, sir, all that, but you mind what you told me.’
‘All right, my man. I attach no blame; that’s not my meaning.’
‘He’s alive and in the country, sir.’
‘Yes, yes; to be sure he’s in the country. Great thing to know that. It will hearten every man of us. Great day, red-letter day when we drop on him, eh, Pearce?’
Then he rose to his feet, but was almost immediately on his knees again for a last look. At length he tore himself away, slipped a crown-piece into the moorman’s hand, remounted, bade the man good-night, and galloped off.
Now the moorman on his way to stop the squire had overtaken and told the post-woman: the blacksmith at the cross-roads had overheard what he said; and from these two the news spread so rapidly and so far that before the morrow’s sundown it was known through the country-side that the otter had been tracked on Matthew Henry’s splosh, that the squire had gone there and seen the prints with his own eyes. To what a pitch of excitement the trackers were aroused by the tidings may be imagined. Most of them were at the stream-side at the first glimmer of day, and all of them remained out hours longer than usual. The squire, expecting that word of the otter might be brought at any moment, feared to leave the house. He had even given orders that Limpetty, the whipper-in, was to have his meals at the kennels and to sleep in the loft.
But the otter’s plans ran counter to the hopes and expectations of his enemies. On the third day after the discovery of his tracks he forsook the moorland for the creek, where he feasted on mussels and flounders till he tired of them. Then he made down the estuary to the headland; he robbed the trammels and spillers of the choicest fish, and on one occasion actually took a bass off a whiffing-line.
Thus another month passed, by the end of which the trackers who had stood so high in the estimation of their neighbours began to be made slight of, and even to be laughed at. Right welcome to them were the heavy rains that rendered river and streams unfit for hunting and furnished a sound excuse for discontinuing the hopeless quest. The flood was indeed a big one, as the mark on the door of the miller’s stable testifies. To this day the old men at the port will tell you they never before knew the sea stained to such a distance by the peaty water, adding in the same breath that the run of fish was ‘a sight to see.’
Harbour and estuary seemed alive as the salmon made their way up the river: people gathered at different spots to see them pass. Villagers crowded the bridge at Tide End where the fish take the weir; Geordie and Tom stood at the fall beneath the pines; the miller, at the foot of his garden, watched them go up the new ladder.