In the wild, it is the law that “they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.”  It isn’t a bad law, because it has much to do with that other law called the “survival of the fittest,” but it is apt to come expensive if persisted in.

Our vole hopped promptly towards the other vole, and made out that the seeds were his; but before any kind of ultimatum could be delivered, a twig fell, as twigs will sometimes, for no special reason that one can see.  The noise it made in that stilly wood was astonishing, and ere the twig had reached the earth there wasn’t a bank-vole above ground.  And yet so astonishingly quick and evasive are these little creatures that in less than thirty seconds there were the two disputants, each erect upon his haunches, with little hand-like forepaws held up and joined under the chin—­as if they were actresses having their photographs taken—­fighting, like little blunt-headed furies, for possession of those seeds—­so it seemed.  I say “so it seemed” advisedly, since close by, and almost invisible because sitting quite still, was another bank-vole, who looked as if she were waiting for something; which she probably was—­a lover.

It was, however, death that came, and he is a too attentive lover.  The battle had been going on some seconds without apparent result, possibly because the voles had to bite upwards, shark-fashion, owing to the fact that their fighting-teeth are wedge-shaped incisors, instead of stabbing fangs, when there was a hrrr!  That is all, just like that—­hrrr!

Then there were no voles; but there seemed to have been no going of the voles, either.  They just were, fighting and watching the fight—­then they just were not.  Instead of them, on the very spot where they had been, a sheeted ghost, with wings that flapped and flapped, and never made any noise, with the face of a cat, and big round eyes that gleamed, and a snore most horrible, had simply been evolved from nowhere, and under its claws was the little red-backed lady who waited for a lover.

Now, the coming of that apparition, whose wings did not say “Hough-hough!” or “Whew-whew!” like other birds’ wings do when they fly, thus proving itself, or rather herself, to be an owl, and the fight of Mr. Hedgehog and the poisoned death, had a direct connection with, and a bearing upon, the little bank-vole’s life, although they may not have seemed to have at first.  If the snake had not run amok against the hedgehog, the latter slow personage would have been well out in the meadow by that time, reducing the worm population, instead of hanging about and coming up the ditch at that moment, with the hot and worried air of one who is late.