through the dusk,
from over the hills, thousands of birds continued to arrive,
creating a wind in the poplars. Like an army marching past,
battalion succeeded battalion at intervals of a few seconds; and the
mass, unwinding like a great ribbon, stretched across the lake. Then
the mist gathered, blotting out everything, all noise ceased, and
the lake itself disappeared in the mist.

Turning in the saddle, Owen saw a hillock and five olive-trees. A
fire was burning. This was the encampment.

VI

He had undertaken this long journey in the wilderness for the sake of
a few days' falconry, and dreaded a disappointment, for all his life
long, intermittently of course, he had been interested in hawks. As
a boy he had dreamed of training hawks, and remembered one taken by
him from the nest, or maybe a gamekeeper had brought it to him, it
was long ago; but the bird itself was remembered very well, a large,
grey hawk--a goshawk he believed it to be, though the bird is rare
in England. As he lay, seeking sleep, he could see himself a boy
again, going into a certain room to feed his hawk. It was getting
very tame, coming to his wrist, taking food from his fingers, and,
not noticing the open window, he had taken the hawk out of its cage.
Was the hawk kept in a cage or chained to the perch? He could not
remember, but what he did remember, and very well, was the moment
when the bird fluttered towards the window; he could see it resting
on the sill, hesitating a moment, doubting its power of flight. But
it had ventured out in the air and had reached a birch, on which it
alighted. There had been a rush downstairs and out of the house, but
the hawk was no longer in the birch, and was never seen by him
again, yet it persisted in his memory.

The sport of hawking is not quite extinct in England, and at various
times he had caused inquiries to be made, and had arranged once to
go to the New Forest and on another occasion to Wiltshire. But
something had happened to prevent him going, and he had continued to
dream of hawking, of the mystery whereby the hawk could be called
out of the sky by the lure--some rags and worsted-work in the shape
of a bird whirled in the air at the end of a string. Why should the
hawk leave its prey for such a mock? Yet it did; and he had always
read everything that came under his hand about hawking with a
peculiar interest, and in exhibitions of pictures had always stood a
long time before pictures of hawk