spread out across it. The shouting from the bank had ceased, and
everybody waited in tense expectancy when the otter disappeared. The dogs
reached the rapid, where they were washed back a few yards before they
could make headway up-stream. Men who came splashing close upon them left
the water to scramble along the bank; and then they stopped abruptly,
while the dogs swam in an uncertain manner about the still reach beyond.
They came out in a few minutes and scampered up and down among the
stones, evidently at fault, for there was no sign of the otter anywhere.
Incredible as it seemed, the hunted creature, an animal that would
probably weigh about twenty-four pounds, had crept up the rush of water
among the feet of those who watched for it and vanished unseen into the
sheltering depths beyond.

Evelyn sighed with relief.

"I think it will escape," she said. "The river's rather full after the
rain, which is against the dogs, and there isn't another shallow for some
distance. Shall we go on?"

They strolled forward behind the dogs, which were again moving up-stream;
but they turned aside to avoid a bit of woods, and it was some time later
when they came out upon a rocky promontory dropping steeply to the river.
Just there, the water flowed through a deep gorge, down the sides of
which great oaks and ashes straggled. In front of Carroll and his
companion a ragged face of rock fell about twenty feet; but there was a
little soil among the stones below, and a dense growth of alders
interspersed with willows, fringed the water's edge. The stream swirled
in deep black eddies beneath their drooping branches, though a little
farther on it poured tumultuously between scattered boulders into the
slacker pool. The rock sloped on one side, and there was a bank of