Country Life
A. COUNTRY WALK.
How vividly, apart from any particular point or importance, small incidents of observation may mirror themselves on the retina of the memory. I was walking the other day across a grass field, when my spaniel, nosing into a clump of bramble, stirred a weasel. It made for a holly bush sonic ten feet in height, ran up like a squirrel and stopped with Its head fitted neatly into a niche between bough and trunk. The mask seemed to me, as I watched it from less than a yard away, exactly the same as a fox's in all but size. The pointed nose and triangular head, the ruddy colour, the quick eye—the likeness was almost ludicrous. The weasel watched us with no sign of terror for a while, and even allowed me to scratch its back with a stick. Finally, when I half- lifted it up on the end of the stick, it at last deigned to run out along the branch, which was very narrow. When near the end it slipped and fell but caught, a twig in the descent and swung there like a monkey, but soon decided to drop. The spaniel puppy saw it, and would perhaps have tried to catch it, but was so surprised by the loud squeak that he stood almost like a pointer ; and the weasel escaped to shelter.
Previous page
