Where the smooth, brown water ran past the alder roots, a very small, dark object moved in advance of a faint, widening ripple.  Grace knew it was the point of the otter’s head; the animal’s lungs were empty since it remained up so long.  Next moment plunging dogs churned the pool into foam, the object vanished, and men ran along the bank to the lower rapid, while those already there beat the shallow with their poles.  The dogs bunched together and began to swim up stream; Gerald and one or two more plunged into the water, and for a few moments the otter showed itself again.

It looked like a fish and not an animal as it broke the surface, rising in graceful leaps.  Then it went down, with the dogs swimming hard close behind, and Grace thought it must be caught.  It was being steadily driven to the lower end of the stopped rapid, where the water was scarcely a foot deep.  The animal reappeared, plunging in and out among the shallows but forging up stream, and the men who meant to turn it back closed up.  There was one at every yard across the belt of sparkling foam.  They had spiked poles to beat the water and it seemed impossible that their victim could get past.

Yet the otter vanished, and for a minute or two there was silence, until the dogs rushed up the bank.  Then somebody shouted, the huntsman blew his horn, and a small, wedge-shaped ripple trailed, very slowly across the next pool.  The otter had somehow stolen past the watchers’ legs and reached deep water, but its slowness told that its strength had gone.  The dogs took the water with a splash, and Grace turned her head.  She felt pitiful and did not want to see the end.  The animal had made a gallant fight, and she shrank from the butchery.

The clatter of heavy boots on stones suddenly stopped; there was a curious pause, and Grace looked up as somebody shouted:  “’Gone to holt!  Ca’ off your hounds.  Wheer’s t’ terrier?”

The hunt swept up the bank, smashed through a hedge, and spread along the margin of the neighboring pool.  A few big alders grew beside its edge, sending down their roots into deep water; but for the most part the bank was supported by timbers driven into the soil, and freshly laid with neatly-bedded turf.  Grace knew this had been done to protect the meadow, because the stream is thrown against the concave side when a pool lies in a bend.

As she stopped at the broken hedge a man ran past carrying a small wet terrier, and two or three more came up with spades.  The otter could not escape now, since the hounds would watch the underwater entrance to the cave among the alder roots, while the terrier would crawl down from the other side.  If a hole could not be found, the men would dig.  They were interrupted soon after they began, for somebody said, “Put down your spade, Tom.  Hold the terrier.”

Grace studied the man who had interfered.  He was young and on the whole attractive.  His face was honest and sunburned; he carried himself well, and was dressed rather neatly in knickerbockers and shooting jacket.  She knew Christopher Askew was the son of a neighboring farmer, who owned his land.  Then, as the men stopped digging, Thorn pushed past.