them to stand on there; how did they begin that hole?" I wondered
lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood, with an open door
like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two new
problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every
turn on the woodland byways.

A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long
lithe form of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the
hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore paws against the
bank, twisting his head from side to side and sniffing nervously.
"Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But
the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times
without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point
where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till
under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay
bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the
nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the
threshold. A long hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours
out of a kingfisher's den, a keen look all around to be sure the
old birds were not returning, and he vanished like a shadow.

"There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my
glasses focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed,
when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot
out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After
him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and
aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a
miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting
for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment
it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took the longing