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