nd the corner, going like the wind. He had time to see it
dive like a dipping kite--but it was a sparrow-hawk--and to hear the
death-scream of a feeding blackbird, before he went completely from
that place, and it knew him no more.

Soon after that he sighted the sea, wide-stretched and restless, ahead,
and turned westward parallel with the coast-line, till, in the
afternoon, he came unto "a land where it was always afternoon"--a flat,
damp, dwarf-treed, relaxing, gray land, mild, as a rule, and
melancholy--a land full of water. But for once it was a cold land, and
the thrush realized that the bitter frost had leapt ahead of him, and
that he might now never outstrip it again, perhaps. I do not know if
he realized, too, that the lead sky, that looked as if it were going to
come down and crush one, meant snow.

In a bare orchard he was attracted by the sight of several blue titmice
and two robins, feeding upon one or two odd apples that had been left
unpicked at the very top of a tree. It seemed strange and out of place
to behold apples in midwinter like that; but, for some reason, he took
only a few pecks, and his devil prompted him down to peck at some
soaked bread among the violets, and to drink at a spring so exquisitely
encrusted with moss that it looked as if everything, every floating
dead leaf, stone, and root, had been upholstered in plush.

Then Fate struck--hard.

A snap, a thump, and he was bouncing over and over, with an air-rifle
bullet in his thigh. It was a blow that knocked him half-silly, and he
was down before he knew, but only for a second, because of what he saw.
He beheld a boy, with an air-rifle in hand, running towards him; but
ahead of the boy was the boy's young cat, who evidently had learnt to
look for a meal when the air-rifle went off.

The cat, being young, however, managed to bungle his pounce for the
fraction of a second, and that is long enough for most of the
wild-folk. Came a mad fluttering, a beating of wings, a quick mix-up,
and, before he knew, that cat found himself frantically chasing that
thrush across the orchard, striking wildly always at a thrush that just
wasn't there, as the latter part flew, part hopped, with every ounce of
strength and agility that clean, hard living had given him, till he was
clear of the trees. Then--up and away, with his heart in his beak, so
to speak, and his brain whirling, till the orchard lay "hull down" on
the horizon, and was only anothe