COUNTRY LIFE
I fished, sorely troubled by hungry fingerlings, I admired a pair of fat little dippers—colley birds—that bobbed on the stones a little farther ahead, and then, because I was having no success and lost interest, I watched a boy who came down the slope past a small farm with a ferret in his hand and a bag of nets over his shoulder. The boy netted half-a-dozen holes on the slope and, before he was joined by his father, had caught two rabbits. Father and son were soon on their knees, and I guessed that the ferret had blocked in a hole. I moved away, casting over another pool, where the same hungry little trout began to drown my fly once more. I forgot about the boy and,,,his ferret until my eye caught a movement on the bank, and I was just in time to see the little lemon beast going below ground. I waded to the bank, and went back to find the boy, but he had gone. The holes on the slope had all been carefully blocked in the hope of keeping the ferret in. As with my fishing, it was a bad day for sport. The ferret was free, hunting on his own account with all the countryside for a hunting-ground.
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