In their straits they invaded the homesteads, and on the fourth day of the thaw, when the ice in the pools was the last vestige of the frost, the starving brutes came pouring over the wall of Brea farmyard and made straight for the poultry-houses.
Some sought the door of the fowls’ house, causing the rooster to shift uneasily on his perch; the rest circled the ducks’ house without finding a way in, for Andrew had stopped the holes in the floor to which they penetrated.
Thus baulked they entered the cattle-sheds and barn, where in the dead silence they could be heard rustling among the straw. Presently a rat appeared on the roof and climbed to the old weather-cock on the roof of the pigeon-cote. Two stoats followed, but failed to trace him to the forlorn refuge whence he was watching them.
Half an hour passed thus in profitless search before the leader, standing in the middle of the yard, uttered a shrill cry. This rallied the band to her, and the yard at once seemed alive with the restless creatures darting hither and thither in their impatience to be gone.
Douglas English.] [To face p. 162.
A Stoat.
They took little notice of the owl that glided to and fro, screaming as it flew; yet they were so ravenous that they would have killed and eaten him, if they could have caught him, bird of prey though he was. The farmer’s wife lay awake wondering what ailed the screech-owl: the hare in the field bordering the bridle-track also wondered, but like the woman, without surmising the cause. The noise ceased when presently the pack left the yard and made past the sycamore towards the lane, seemingly on the way to the “curlew” moor. When abreast of the broken grindstone, however, the leader, who was at her wits’ end to know where to go, suddenly turned and retraced her steps along the bridle-track. Abrupt as was her turning movement each stoat kept its place as though it were part of a snake, which in truth the long file closely resembled.
Reaching the stone steps into the field where the hare was at pasture, the leader appeared to be in two minds as to whether she should mount them or go straight on. A hedgehog brought her to a decision. He had been drawn from his winter quarters by the open weather, showed just then on the path and instantly attracted her. He was very sleepy, but he saw the stoats coming, immediately curled into a ball, and so awaited their onset.
What savagery the famished creatures exhibited! What determined though futile efforts they made to penetrate the hedgehog’s defence! Blood was drawn, it is true, their heads were smeared with it, but it was their own blood which they licked before again falling tooth and nail on the prickly ball. Their second assault proving as unsuccessful as the first, they formed a ring around the urchin, chattering to unnerve it and so cause it to unfold. All their efforts were vain, the hedgehog was impregnable to moral as to physical attack.
But though the blood-curdling chorus was wasted on the hedgehog, it so affrighted the hare that he broke into a panic-stricken flight, nor did he stop till he had reached the chantry. There he stood listening for the cry he dreaded. His apprehensions however were unwarranted, the stoats were ignorant of his neighbourhood, and on abandoning the hedgehog retreated in the direction of the southern cliffs, slowly at first but more quickly as the night grew old, for fear of being surprised by dawn.