Down a deep valley in the West Country winds a swift moorland stream. Mile after mile of sombre, heath-clad solitudes stretch away on either side of it, broken with gorse and bracken, and with here and there a few stunted and storm-beaten trees. Well-ordered farm lands slope down to it. At far intervals it roars under the ancient bridges of solitary hamlets. Here, in the heart of the great hills, it runs between wooded slopes, covered with thick growth of sturdy oak trees—leafless still, but with purple of fast opening blossoms that, with the rich red brown of dead leaves and withered fern about their feet, lends to the whole glen a glow of warmth and colour.

Here the red deer steal out after sundown over the ruinous wall and through the untended hedgerow to the broad meadow that for a space divides the river from the wood. Here in the twilight the otters play, rolling over and over in the water like great grey cats. The beautiful moorland sheep that lift their horned heads to watch the solitary wayfarer, with half-curious, half-supercilious gaze, seem hardly less the true creatures of the wild than the grey rabbit that you startle from his noonday dreaming among the long grass by the hedgerow, or than the brown squirrel, coming down for a frolic on the soft, green turf.

Below the wooded slope runs the river, here foaming over great blocks of stone lying prostrate in its bed, there eddying round a jutting bar of rock, now loitering in quiet backwaters, where dead leaves and tufts of grass and all the smaller flotsam of the stream spin slowly on the tranquil surface. At one point it roars through a narrow channel between two ponderous stones, which lie calm and unmoved in all the headlong rush; at another it pauses, silent, in a deep, dark pool. Now it is broken all across in a tumultuous cataract, and now again it widens to a broad sheet of waving glass. At a bend in the river bank—a little hollow worn by the floods of many winters—three alders overhang. And at their feet, close to the margin of the stream, sheltered by a screen of strong young branches growing upward from the base of the trees, is a pleasant resting-place from which to watch unseen the life and movement of this bird-haunted hollow—the warblers that throng the thickets by the shore, the dippers that on swift wings pass and repass along the watery highway, the graceful wagtails that with dainty steps run up and down upon the strips of sand.

Looking down from the edge of the slope at the far end of the meadow, framed by the broad arms of giant trees, show the buildings of a farm, that with its wide eaves and crested gables, its deep-sunk dormer windows, its rows of hives, and its ruinous sheds, is a picture in itself. Close by it one of the moorland highways, a narrow country lane, slopes steeply down, crossing the river by a ford. And by the road, its grey masonry clearly drawn against the shadowy spires of thick-growing alder trees, is an old stone bridge—so old that no clue remains, no legend even, to its history or its builders. Two thousand years, perhaps, has the river run beneath these ponderous slabs of stone, laid flat across rude, unmortared piers.

Beyond the bridge, through a purple mist of branches, show silver glimpses of the river, then a broad stretch of meadow with dark pine woods above it, among which the young larch foliage floats in feathery clouds of green, and above these again, the brown and desolate moorland. Near the bridge a little party of wanderers have made their camp. The blue smoke of their fire drifts slowly this way, with the pleasant scent of burning pine wood, the pleasanter voices of girls and the shouts of children. It is a perfect day for camping in the open; with warm air, and blue sky, and soft white clouds sailing slowly over,—a day of clear shining after rain.

The air over the stream is full of insect life, of flies of many shapes and various hues, of browns, and drakes, and duns, so dear to the brown river trout; and, in counterfeit presentment at any rate, almost dearer to the soul of the trout-fisher. And as you watch the myriad wingÈd things that sail along the water, that settle on the warm stones, or on the alder boughs, or even on your hand, you will think it small ground for wonder that the thickets by the stream should be so full of birds.

One might think that the roar of the river would be enough to drown all other sounds. But, clear above it rise the notes of tits and finches and warblers. The breezy chatter of the swallows, the call of the dipper, the woodwren's hasty little stave of song, the whistle of the blackbird, the mellow call of the cuckoo, are as plain as if the great voice of the river were not heard at all. In the next tree two finches have alighted; their restless movements and sharp challenge of alarm betraying only too plainly what they are so anxious to conceal, that their nest is somewhere near. Two beautiful birds they are; one with the red flush on his breast, the broad bar of white in either wing, the slate-blue feathers of his lifted crest. The other, hardly less charming, with all her colours pitched in soberer key. With anxious and persistent iteration of their one shrill note of protest, they flit from branch to branch; and when you rise, and peer into the tangle of ivy-mantled boughs above you, the birds grow more clamorous still. There is the nest, its mossy cup woven deftly among the slender twigs, studded all over with lichen points of silver—as ever, a miracle of beauty.

There are many birds preparing for the great event of the year. It is not for nothing, you may be sure, that that old blackbird has stayed out at the same corner of the hedge every day for a week past; there is some good reason for his stealing towards it now across the wood, a moving shadow, quiet for once. We can read the signs of the times in the notes of the birds no less than in the heightened colours of their plumage. It is a love-song pure and simple that yonder hedge sparrow, poised on a straying spray of bramble, is singing so softly to himself. The ringing call of an oxeye overhead never was more clear, and blithe, and musical. But the soft notes of a flock of long-tailed tits, not yet disbanded, have a still softer tone to-day. Their light-hearted gossip seems subdued and low, as if they knew the days were near when every woodlander will go about his work with all the stealth he may. There is a gold-crest rummaging among the ivy that clings about an old elm hard by, almost within arm's length, so near that the touch of vivid yellow on his crown gleams like very gold.

Smoke is still rising from the white ashes of the fire, but it is proof enough that the little group has moved away, and that no one is visible from the highway of the river, when a kingfisher flashes across the bridge, straight up the stream, a swift gleam of azure through the sunlit air. As you follow its flight to the bend where the river vanishes behind its fringing alders, you are aware of a moving point of light on one of the great boulders far out from shore. Then the shape of a dipper shows clearly on the top of the stone. A moment later it dives straight down into the water, reappearing some yards nearer this way, pausing on another great block of sandstone, to bow and curtsey, uttering now and then a loud, clear note, its white gorget glowing like a star, whiter even than the very foam of the river. Now it swims lightly across a smooth backwater. Now it works its way sidelong across a rapid rush of the current, stooping now and then to pick some dainty morsel from among the stones, and all the while moving slowly with the stream, until at last it stands on a stone in mid-channel, not thirty yards away—a graceful, charming, dainty little figure, the very naiad of the mountain stream.

But alas, there is another spectator of its movements. Across the meadow sails a dark, hawk-like figure, swift and silent, disappearing in the oak wood on the farther shore. In a moment every voice is hushed. Not a bird calls. Not even a wren dares to utter an alarm. There is a sudden rush of wings. A merlin dashes from the thicket by the shore, catches up the dipper in its cruel claws, and, alighting on a great flat stone, in the middle of the river, it buries its merciless bill again and again in the white breast of its struggling captive. What a picture! The sunlight is full on the blue back of the beautiful little falcon, as it leans forward a little, half hiding its prey under its drooping wings. Giving a swift glance to right and left—the sparkle of its keen eyes plain to see—it tears out a little cloud of feathers that flutter lightly down, and sail away upon the stream. Again the merlin looks up. Something has startled him. He gives one glance this way. He catches sight of a figure under the alder trees. Like a flash he is gone. The dead dipper falls into the water, sailing down the river, in which but a few minutes since it was playing, full of life and happiness, the white feathers from its blood-stained gorget floating away from it at every swirl of the current; a sorrowful little heap of ruffled plumage, whirling with the whirling stream.