Finding
No Outlook On Any Side I Went Back To The Streams, Oftenest To
The Otter, Where, Lying By The
Hour on the bank, I watched the
speckled trout below me and the dark-plumaged dipper with
shining white breast
Standing solitary and curtseying on a,
stone in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher
would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely grey
heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared,
although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that
gives the river its name. Still it was good to know that he
was there, and had his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank
under the rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of
overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmer during my stay,
but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter.
Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet
coats and blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds
and shouts of excited people, it had no sooner got half a mile
above Ottery St. Mary, where I had joined the straggling
procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of
me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found.
The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the
dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image
in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.
The watching was not wholly in vain, since there were here
revealed to me things, or aspects of things, that were new.
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