wide, anxious, unseeing eyes, brilliant and inscrutable. As I
drew near to Tible township, he stirred violently in the bag, though
I do not know if he had recognised the place. Then, as I came to the
sheds, he looked sharply from side to side, and stretched his neck
out long. I was a little afraid of him. He gave a loud, vehement yell,
opening his sinister beak, and I stood still, looking at him as he
struggled in the bag, shaken myself by his struggles, yet not thinking
to release him.

Mrs. Goyte came darting past the end of the house, her head sticking
forward in sharp scrutiny. She saw me, and came forward.

"Have you got Joey?" she cried sharply, as if I were a thief.

I opened the bag, and he flopped out, flapping as if he hated the touch
of the snow, now. She gathered him up and put her lips to his beak. She
was flushed and handsome, her eyes bright, her hair slack, thick, but
more witch-like than ever. She did not speak.

She had been followed by a grey-haired woman with a round, rather sallow
face and a slightly hostile bearing.

"Did you bring him with you, then?" she asked sharply. I answered that I
had rescued him the previous evening.

From the background slowly approached a slender man with a grey
moustache and large patches on his trousers.

"You've got 'im back 'gain, Ah see," he said to his daughter-in-law. His
wife explained how I had found Joey.

"Ah," went on the grey man. "It wor our Alfred scarred him off, back
your life. He must 'a' flyed ower t' valley. Tha ma' thank thy stars
as 'e wor fun, Maggie. 'E'd a bin froze. They a bit nesh, you know," he
concluded to me.

"They are," I answered. "This isn't their country."

"No, it isna," replied Mr. Goyte. He spoke very slowly and deliberately,
quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked
at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the
peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap.
In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had
a face young and almost delicate, like a young man's. His blue eyes
twinkled with some inscrutable source of pleasure, his skin was fine
and tender, his nose delicately arched. His grey hair being slightly
ruffled, he had a debonnair look, as of a youth who is in love.

"We mun tell 'im it's come," he said slowly, and turning he called:

"Alfred--Alfred! Wheer's ter gotten to?"

Then he turned again to the group.

"Ge