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But if the night was mild and the stars were not hidden by a cloud of mist, he would steal along his run-way to the main road of the riverside people, strip the bark from the willow-stoles, and feed contentedly on the juicy pith; while his friend, the shrew, busy in the shallows near the reed-bed, searched for salmon-spawn washed from the "redd" by the turbulent flood, or for newly hatched fry no longer guarded by the lonely parent fish long since departed on her way to the distant sea.
We surprised one, swimming around amongst the leaves, snatching here and there the choicest of them, and when he turned to go out and rose in the water, as his feet touched bottom, I gave him a ball without fatal effect, and landing, we put Carlo on the track, which was marked by occasional drops and clots of blood, and hearing him well off into the woods, and in that furious and deep bay which indicates close pursuit, we went back to our boat and paddled upstream to a run-way Steve knew of, where the deer sometimes crossed the river.
Arrived in the run-way, Reynard picked up the dead rabbit and slung it carelessly across his shoulder. Then he trotted leisurely down the run-way toward his own earth, where he meant to feast in security and comfort. At the end of the run-way came a wide, open stretch of waste land, on the far side of which lay the track to Reynard's cave.
He tumbled into popularity as quickly as the Kaiser tumbled into the European war; and he elbowed his way into the run-way for all offices. Previously bright stars were dimmed by the brilliancy of his superior luminosity. He became a parasite at the local stores and clubs, and was a wart on the grocer's counter. He became a whirlwind of popularity.
There were the women and children, the water carriers, a number of them, filling their gourds. At sight of us they stampeded madly up the run-ways, leaving behind them a trail of gourds they had dropped. We landed, and of course we neglected to tie up the catamaran, which floated off down the river. Right cautiously we crept up a run-way.
The dense blackness showing directly ahead seemed to promise an extension of passageway into the rock; so, lighting a pine knot at the altar fire, and bidding Cairnes follow me closely, I led forward down the narrow tunnel. The floor was uneven, while so irregular and rough appeared roof and walls as to convince me this was a natural excavation, probably the run-way for some ancient watercourse.
We then visited an "earth" within the wood, in which dwelt a lonely old fox I had often watched as he stole along the rabbit-tracks towards the Crag of Vortigern; and there I pointed out how crafty Reynard, having selected a convenient rabbit burrow, had blocked up every hole but one, in a thick clump of brambles with soil thrown out in digging, and how the grass and the ground-ivy had luxuriantly covered the bare mounds, and so encroached on the fox's winding track through the wood and about the bramble clump, that even to an experienced visitor the only fox-sign likely to be detected was in the loose arrangement of the bents and the twigs by the arch of the run-way as it entered the thicket.
I think it's perfectly awful not to ride faster. She may be lying on the road d-e-a-d-!" By this time Jefferson thought it might be politic to manifest more concern, so throwing a well-assimilated anxiety into voice and manner he said hastily: "Now you fo' yo'ng ladies jist come 'long careful an' orderly, so's not ter bring no mo' trebbulations, 'pon us an' I'll light out fer dat run-way.
Though shy, he was as curious as the squirrel that, one afternoon when Brighteye was early abroad, hopped down the run-way to make his acquaintance, and frightened him into a precipitate retreat, then ran out to a branch above the stream and loudly derided the creature apparently drowning in the stream.
Picking my way in a line straight through the tangle and parallel with this path, I came to an opening where the grass was beaten down for about six square yards more particularly for two or three yards in the part nearest the spot at which the tunnelled run-way entered it.
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