falling water, and swam slowly down, often touching under the bank. He passed under the middle arch of the railway bridge, and reached the weir slanting across the river. The summer water tumbled down the fish-pass, but glided thin as a snail’s shell over the top end of the concrete sill. The lower end, by the fender at the head of the leat, was dry. Tarka walked along the sill, nearly to the end, which was two inches above the level of the pool. He stretched his weary back on the warm concrete and sprawled in the sun.
He lay basking for more than an hour, enjoying the sound of water tumbling in the pass and sliding down the face of the weir. Swallows dipped in the pool, and sometimes a peal leapt in the shadow of the bridge. Tarka’s head was always raised before the fish fell back, but he did not leave the sill. Warm and brilliant sun-flickers on the shallows below dazed his eyes, and made him drowsy. But when a hound, working alone down the left bank, climbed on the sill by the pass and shook itself, he was instantly alert. Half lying down, he remained quite still, while the hound lifted its muzzle to sniff. Something moved on the bridge—otter and hound turned their heads together, seeing a man behind the railing. At first the man saw only the hound, but when it walked along the sill and ran down the face of the weir, he saw the otter it was following. The man had come along the railway to see if many fish were in the pool; he was a poacher nicknamed Shiner, and the top of one of his fingers was missing. He had no love for otters. Along
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