A bitter, dull paling of the sky, which by courtesy we will call dawn, found them cleaning again, with their hand-like forepaws, exactly like cats, inside a water-vole burrow.  The owner had been out, bark-chipping, all night—­it was the only thing he could find to keep body and life from parting company—­and was not over-pleased, on his return, to find that he had company at home.  A short two-round contest ensued, during which the water-vole must have felt as if he had taken on a bit of black lightning.  Then the water-vole went away, somewhat bewildered, to turn some smaller water-vole out of his winter bed; and the rats curled themselves up, heads between hindlegs, tail encircling all, with only their ever-ready, elfin ears poking out to give the alarm, and they slept.  And, by the way, it was a saying in the wild that no one had ever seen them asleep, or knew if, or how, they did sleep.

Nothing came to disturb them during the day—­which was a wonder, for all the wild was hungry and looking for food—­and at the hour when

  Night, busy with her dawn, begins it with a star,

they came out, after a prolonged, starry-eyed stare, from their fastness, and continued their journey.

Things were serious now.  They had not fed, and could find nothing to feed upon but two hawthorn-berries, dropped by the wasteful fieldfares; but they drank, and cleaned, and proceeded up-stream, with that caution one only learns in a world full of enemies and empty of friends.

Another six hours of this cold on an empty stomach would send them into that sleep—­the dread, drugged slumber of the cold—­from which there is no awakening in this world, and they seemed to know it.  They were desperate, and their eyes burnt in their sharp heads like gimlet-holes of light.  Desperate they were, as the poor, little, brilliantly resplendent, and tropic-looking kingfisher had, no doubt, been, whom they found, frozen into a dried, huddled heap, under the stream-bank, and so emaciated that, after they had picked his bones, they scarcely knew that they had touched him.

But anon the face of the snow changed—­meaningly for them.  Whereas before they had been alone, almost, in a frozen world, scarcely crossing a trail but the quadruple track of water-voles or the chain-pattern impression of a moorhen—­nor had seen a living thing but the square-ended, squat, little, black form of a water-vole out upon an alder-branch, gnawing bark—­they now began to be aware of gradually increasing company.  Not that the company advertised itself, mark you.  Being wild company, it would not; but they knew it was there.