An October dusk and Herr Professor Hedgehog was walking back from the village to his little cottage, an outlier quite far along the Sea Road. He'd enjoyed a very pleasant evening with the Mink who lived in a tall pale blue house on the main square – he spoke extremely good German and was most interesting to talk to. They'd had a couple of pints of strong malty beer at the pub and had ranged through literature and music and art and the romantic memories of a walking holiday along the Danube the Mink had taken a year or two before the War. And as Herr Professor Hedgehog made his way home in the dimming autumn light, he forgot he was in Dorset for a moment, and stood in his mind by that great river of Mitteleuropa, cold, wide, rushing, bouldered and eel-green, church bells ringing in bustling port-towns, storks circling to their nests overheard, the woods dark and endless from the water. Then suddenly his vision faded and he heard the sea in the distance churning against the Chesil and smelt the woodsmoke and fried egg-and-potatoes and tilled fields of Old Fox's village, and his soul came to rest once more in its safety and kindness and calm.

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