re in companies.

"The wing feathers are the best for father's pipes," she explained; "but
the tail feathers are also very good. Sometimes I get splendid luck and
find a dozen or two in a morning, and sometimes the birds don't seem to
have parted with a single feather. The place to find them is round the
furze clumps, because they catch there when the wind blows them."

The great hogged ridge of North Hill keeps Bridetown snug in winter
time, and bursts the snow clouds on its bosom. To-day the breezes blew
and shadows raced above the rolling green expanses. The downs were
broken by dry-built walls and spattered with thickets of furze and
white-thorn, black-thorn and elder. Blue milkwort, buttercups and
daisies adorned them, with eye-bright and the lesser, quaking grass that
danced over the green. Rabbits twinkled into the furzes where Waldron's
three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck
coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum
danger before he darted in. It was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the
bunting and carrion crow.

"Here we killed on the seventeenth of January last," said Raymond's
host. "A fine finish to a grand run. We rolled him over on this very
spot after forty-five minutes of the best. It is always good to remember
great moments in the past."

On the southern slope of North Hill there stood a ruined lime-kiln
whose walls were full of fern and coated with mother o' thyme. A bank of
brier and nettles lay before the mouth. They hid the foot of the kiln
and made a snug and secluded spot. Bridetown clustered in its elms far
below; then the land rose again to protect the hamlet from the south;
and beyond stretched the blue line of the Channel.

The men sat here and smoked, while Estelle hunted for flowers and
feathers.

She came back to them presently with a bee orchis. "For you," she said,
and gave it to Raymond. "What the dickens is it?" he asked, and she told
him. "They're rather rare, but they live happily on the down in some
places. I know where." He thanked her very much.

"Never seen one before," he said. "A funny little pink and black devil,
isn't it?"

"It isn't a devil," she assured him; "if anything, it's an angel. But
really it's more like a small bumble-bee than anything. Perhaps you've
never seen a bumble-bee either?"

"Oh, yes, I have--they don't sting." Estelle laughed.

"I thought that once. A boy in the village told me that bum