And all the time, also, the polecat, without seeming to take the slightest notice of him, was watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting, hoping for a chance while he hunted.

But this was not intended as an exhibition of “frightfulness,” though the beast had slain far more innocents than he could eat.  It was part of his duty; and though men have accused his kind of being possessed of a joy of killing, the accusation is by no means proven.  And, in any case, the accused might reply to civilization, “Same to you, sir, and many hundreds of times more so.”

Anyway, he now picked up a young peewit and made for the nearest dike; then along this, and presently into the water and across to the other side, swimming strongly and well; then along a smaller dike, hugging the reeds as much as possible, and pursued by a running fire of abuse from the sedge and marsh and grasshopper warblers, from wagtails, meadow-pipits, reed-buntings, larks, and all the small-bird population of those parts, till he came to the sea-bank, called by the natives “sea-wall.”  This was a high, grass-bearded bank designed to constrain the waters of the estuary, and there, in a hole, curtained by a dandelion and guarded by the stiff spears of the coarse marram grass, he stuffed his victim.

The burrow was not empty when he came to it, for it already contained two moorhens’ eggs; but there was still room for more, and one by one he fetched the remainder of his victims, mother and all, that way, and stuffed them into the burrow, with a plodding, steady, exact doggedness of purpose that was rather surprising in a mere wild beast who, if seen casually, would have appeared to the ordinary man to be merely aimlessly wandering about the landscape.  And, mind you, this was not quite such a simple and “soft” job as it looked.  Grit was needed to accomplish it, even.

There was, for instance, the sudden, far too suggestive, swirl in the water as he crossed the dike for the third time, loaded, that gave more than a hint of some unknown—­and therefore the more sinister—­haunter of those muddied depths of pollution, who took a more than passing interest in the smell of blood, and must, to judge by the swirl, have been too big to be safe.  And that was probably a giant female eel, as dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size—­though he ate eels—­might care to face.  Then there was the marsh-harrier—­and the same might have been a kind of owl if it wasn’t a sort of hawk—­who flapped up like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only waiting—­he felt sure of it—­for the polecat to slip, or meet a foe, or have an accident, or something, before breaking its own avine neutrality.  Then, too, there was the stoat, or, rather, not the stoat only, but the stoat and his wife, who would have murdered him if they had dared, and took to shadowing and watching him from cover in the most meaning sort of way.  And, finally, there was the lean, nosing, sneaking