Day had scarcely broken when the old marshman came bustling out of his cottage to see whether the fox—as he supposed the marauder to be—had carried off any of his ducks. Before he had crossed the little garden, however, he descried the snow-marks on the door and, from their size, judged them to be made by a badger, till his eyes fell on the unmistakable trail outside the gate, which placed the raiders’ identity beyond all possible doubt.
‘Oters! Lor, whoever would ha’ thought it?’
And then, as he remembered that the mere was frozen and the creatures shut off from the water, the expression of surprise changed to one of triumph, and forgetting for a moment his decrepitude, he exultingly exclaimed: ‘They’re mine—sure as eggs, they’re mine!’ It was not their destruction that elated him, but the prospect—the almost certain prospect—of securing their pelts, and of adding a sovereign to the dwindling store in the thatch.
Of course, before he could dispose of the skins he must find the otters, and shoot them when found; but what could be easier, he thought, than to track them down with such a trail; and then even he, old and infirm though he was, could hardly fail to hit the long-bodied creatures as they left their couches and floundered through the snow. So easy did the task seem in the first flush of excitement, before the difficulties presented themselves, crowding upon him as if to shake him from his purpose. The bitterness of the wind, the depths of the drifts, the possibility—nay, the probability, of the creatures having sought the cliffs, his own physical debility: all confronted him, but only to be made light of and swept aside before he turned and hobbled back to the cottage, determined at all costs to make the attempt.
On crossing the threshold he went straight to the hearth, his eyes raised to the two guns and a brass blunderbuss that rested on wooden pegs above it. The flintlock was within easy reach; but it was the modern gun he meant to use and, standing on tiptoe, he managed to grasp the hammers and take it down. A little over a year before, when he had put the wonderful piece there, he thought he should never use it again, never dreaming of such an easy chance as that offered by otters on the snowed-up mere.
‘Can I hold straight enow, wonder.’ ‘Iss, sure,’ came the complacent answer; ‘you can hold straight enow for that.’
Nevertheless, as if conscious that he could not and fearing to put his enfeebled powers to the test, he kept blowing on the barrels, though all the dust had gone, until at last, remembering the dark, snow-laden sky, he raised the stock to his shoulder, shut one eye, and looked along the gun. In his younger days man and weapon might have been molten together in bronze, so steadily could he stand and hold; but now, as he had dreaded, the sight zig-zagged over the pane when he aimed at a starling on the medlar-tree outside.
‘’Tis no use; couldn’t hit a seal, leave alone an oter, with muzzle wobblin’ all over the place like that—dear, dear, oh, dear!’ and he sank into the corner of the settle.
But as he sat before the furze fire which a girl was tending, warmth came back to his hands, the thought of the golden sovereign quickened his blood, and he resolved to make a second attempt. Rising to his feet, he again raised the gun to his shoulder and, holding his breath, aimed at the bird still bunched up on the swaying branch. As the sight kept fairly true to the mark, confidence returned, the old man’s face brightened, and resting the weapon against the table, he set about his preparations. He fetched from a drawer in the dresser powder-flask, shot-pouch, caps and wads; he loaded both barrels, and replaced the ramrod. Then he turned up the collar of his worn velveteen coat, pulled the badger-skin cap over his ears and, telling the child he should not be away long, sallied out with the gun at half-cock under his arm.
The trail led past the frozen-in boat towards the tossing withy-bed, but just before reaching it, swerved unexpectedly, as if the creatures had caught a glimpse of some forager who had forestalled them, or had all at once thought it best to make without delay for the farther side of the marsh. Bending his bowed figure as he turned, the old man set his face to the gale and plodded bravely along by the side of the tracks, the snow in places reaching half-way up his leather leggings. The depth of it made him hopeful that the otters had not gone far before lying up; so, as he drew near each bit of cover that offered harbourage, he raised the hammers and held the gun at the ready. He did this again and again, whilst beating the tussocky ground on the farther bank of the stream, where the otters had stayed to quest before crossing the unbroken expanse of snow that stretched to the foot of the hill.
At every stride now he was getting more and more under shelter of the land; every score yards the snow was becoming appreciably deeper and deeper, until at last it lay in a big drift that threatened to bar his way. A break in the embankment, fluted and escalloped by the wind, showed where the otters had tunnelled their way through; and the old man, sanguine as to their near neighbourhood, after blowing on his numbed fingers, tightened his grip on the barrels and determined to follow. As the drift was formidable enough to daunt a younger and a taller man, he twice shrank from committing himself to the smothering mass. But again the thought of the golden sovereign, now as he believed so nearly his, lured him on: he held the gun above his head, went at the yielding obstacle, sank in it, disappeared all but hand and gun, fought with it, and at last battled through. Furiously brushing the snow out of his eyes, he looked eagerly to right and to left, thinking the game was afoot and striving to escape; but among the laid reeds that met his gaze no living thing stirred: only the big and the little trails, as plain as under the wall of the duck-house, wound in and out amongst the stems, trending in the direction of the mere. ‘No hurry, my beauties; I shall come up wi’ ’ee by-and-by;’ and snap, snap, went the brittle reeds as he made his slow way through them. He kept looking eagerly ahead as though he expected to catch sight of the game retreating before his noisy advance, but nothing caught his eye save the wing of a moorhen on which some fortunate forager had broken his fast.
Yet though he saw nothing of the otters themselves, he came on evidence in the snow which told him they had not spent the night wholly in wandering. Between the reeds and the creek were the beaten places where they had rolled, and a gunshot farther, the slope down which they had slid. On sighting the slide he stopped, astonished that famine-stricken creatures, as he knew they must be, could waste a moment in gambols. ‘Most playsomest critturs on God’s eerth,’ said he; but at once resumed his murderous errand, now with grave misgivings lest he should presently discover that the otters had kept straight on to the bar and cliffs, and got beyond his reach. He was greatly elated, therefore, on reaching the furzy foreland, to find that his fears were groundless, that the otters, instead of crossing the mouth of the creek, had rounded the point and passed up the inlet; for so he felt sure of coming upon them, and most probably in the nearer of the two likeliest holts towards which, whenever he peeped from under the sheltering peak of his cap, the gleaming eyes were directed. It was the ancient pollard whence he had twice seen an otter steal away as he sculled past the island on which it grew.
‘They’re theere right enow,’ the old man said when he saw the trail turn that way, and raising both hammers to full cock, he went on with a stealth he had not before thought necessary. As he reached the island he lost the tracks under the snow-laden tangle. This he proceeded to beat thoroughly; but as he did not really expect to find the quarry there, presently he ceased trampling, looked towards the hollow trunk where he believed they were, called out, ‘Harkin’, are ’ee?’ crept as close to the bole as he dared, and peeped through the cleft. He was obliged to keep at some little distance to get a fair shot when they bolted; and screw his eyes and crane his neck as he might, it was impossible to distinguish the dark bodies in the gloomy recess. He felt sure however they were there, and it occurred to him he might dislodge them with a snowball. Taking up a cake of snow that bore the impress of his hobnailed soles, he mad............