THE   OTTER'S   STORY.

Four o'clock and a May morning, with the hedgerows greening over and sparkling with dewdrops in the level sunshine. The fronds of the bracken are touched with frost: the air is keen in the clear morning freshness; but the birds are singing their fullest spring song of gladness—that song they sing when summer is close at hand. The thrush's exultant notes ring from the topmost pinnacles of the spruce-firs, and the richer, tenderer song of the blackbird comes in cadences from the low bush where he sits and sings unseen.

" Mavis and merle are singing," but the notes of other birds chime into the sweet jangle of song, for there are whole shrubberies full of birds, and the morning has awakened them to a world filled with sunshine, alive with gladness. But what of the hills, far away across the broad valley— folded, hill beyond hill in lines of beauty, until in the blue distance the faint outline against the sky may be the " Delectable Mountains," or the " Land of Beulah," so unearthly does it look in the softened glow of the early sun.

B