But along towards dawn there came an altogether different sort of sound, somehow—­a sort of a little chuckling sound; and the polecat, answering it, came out.  He looked rather less awful now than when he had gone in.  A form was standing outside—­a dark, low, long form, like himself; and, like himself, you could easily become aware of it without seeing it, even with your handkerchief to your nose.

It was his wife, smaller, but no less dangerous, than he.  She was carrying an old hen-redshank in her jaws, its long beak and one of its wings clearly silhouetted against the moon.  And apparently she would be very pleased if her husband would come out of the hole and make room for her to stuff the redshank into it.

Then, together, they moved at their indescribable, undulating gait—­they looked like a snake between them in the moonlight—­along the sea-bank, till they came, with caution and many clever tricks of vanishing, in case anybody might be watching, to yet another burrow, screened completely and very neatly guarded by the splayed leaves of a bunch of frosted sea-holly.

Both beasts went into the burrow, at the end of which was a nest containing live things, which squirmed and made little, tiny, infant noises in the darkness.  They were the polecats’ children, four of them, all quite young, and all very hungry and very lively indeed; and they explained a good deal of the reason for the stores of food set by in other burrows in the “sea-wall.”

But they did not explain quite all, for, unless Mrs. Polecat liked her dinner high—­and there was nothing I could find in her methods to show that she did—­or unless Mr. Polecat had got a craze for collecting specimens and eggs, or forgot where half of his trophies were hidden as a natural habit of absent-mindedness, one cannot quite see the reason for hiding so much so soon, before the young could feed upon the “specimens.”

However, I suppose the two beasts knew their own business best.  The old male polecat seemed to, anyway, for just as the first flicker of dawn was paling the eastern sky he went off down to the mist-hidden dike, and, in no more than ten short minutes, returned with an eel, protesting violently in that horrible way eels have, which he promptly proceeded to decapitate and eat.

The afternoon had still some little time to run, when the waving grass down the side of the sea-bank and the half of a glimpse of dull tawny gave away the male polecat leaving his “earth” for the war-path once more.  Was he ever anything else than on the war-path if he moved abroad at all?

That, even from above, was, I swear, all the indication he gave of his exit.  Now, although it is a rule in the wild that self-advertisement is most unhealthful, there may be times when a beast like the polecat may not advertise itself enough.  And this was one of those times.