In the thick white dust their swift feet had left a line drawn roughly yet lightly, the paws leaving not an exact but an elongated, ill-defined impression.

But where the fourth stopped, elevated his neck, and cried to his mate, there was a perfect print of the fore-feet side by side.

So slight a track would be obliterated by the first cart that came by.
Till that day I had never seen so many as five stoats together hunting in a pack.

It would seem as if stoats and weasels had regular routes; for I now recollected that in the previous winter, when the snow was on the ground, I surprised two weasels almost exactly in the same spot.

At other times, too, I have seen solitary stoats and weasels (which may have had companions in the hedge) hunting along that mound, both before and since.