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In that moment something trod softly, ever so softly, somewhere, and a spray of laced bracken swayed one quarter of an inch, and the bank-vole was not. Again about a minute's pause, and three bank-voles came out together.
They die anyway; but no matter, for they are small and very many. Also, vipers know all about voles, field and bank; they specialize in 'em! But our bank-vole knew all about the "freezing" game, too, and he "froze." My word, how that little beggar was still, so utterly bereft of movement that a fly settled upon him about the first and the last that would, I should judge!
The noise it made in that stilly wood was astonishing, and ere the twig had reached the earth there wasn't a bank-vole above ground.
He came very cautiously from his hole, and the first thing his fine long whiskers telegraphed him the presence of was an oak-gall one of those round knobs that grow upon twigs like nuts, you know, but have a fat grub inside instead of a kernel. At the same instant a leaf rustled, and flp! there was no bank-vole.
Also, the thing rustled horribly, and Fact can say what she likes. I swear it shot along quite flat, crawling, not undulating; but, ough! what a lightning, footless, legless crawl! No wonder the poor little devil of a bank-vole squeaked! The wonder was he didn't faint on the spot, for he knew what was coming.
Later, when the moon peeped out of a hole in the clouds, and the bank-vole peeped out of one in the bank, together and his beady eyes were not much behind the moon for brightness when the tiny, long-eared bats were imitating black lightning overhead, and a single owl was hooting like a lost soul seeking a home, away in the black heart of the woods, the bank-vole witnessed the burial of that hated viper.
Blackbirds, thrushes, yellow-hammers, and larks had wandered by in the grass, a wood-pigeon and a squirrel had loitered among the acorns under the oak, and a hedgehog had led her young through the briars. Rabbits, too, had left their trails in the clover, and a red bank-vole had strayed near the boundaries of the field-vole's colony.
Down that tunnel drummed the bank-vole, seeking to foul his trail with just any other creature; and, the highway being, as I have said, a sort of public affair, he met first a mouse gone astray, then a mole asleep, then a long-tailed wood-mouse, then a short-tailed field-vole, then a shrew about as big as your little finger.
It might have been the thick end of a whip-lash or a spring, and, like a spring, as it recoiled it coiled, and was still. The bank-vole saw. Most entirely did he see, and felt no joy in the seeing, either.
Now, that was in the morning, soon after sunrise; but long before that, indeed the moment the hedgehog had first attacked the owl and forced her to turn her attention to him, the little female bank-vole, who by some mischance or miscalculation, had evaded the first terrible handshake of the owl which spells death, had rolled clear of the fight, and dashed for her life to the nearest tussock of grass that offered shelter; and the first thing she fell over there was our bank-vole, "frozen" motionless.