. In an
instant a sharp beak was driven into his head, and then, while yet his
body quivered, the feathers were plucked from his breast and his heart
laid bare. Hungry from his fast, for he had touched nothing that day,
being so occupied with his master's business, the hawk picked the bones,
and then, after the manner of his kind, wishing to clean his beak, flew
up and perched on a large dead bough of the oak just overhead.

The moment he perched, a steel trap which had been set there by the
keeper flew up and caught him, with such force that his limbs were
broken. With a shriek the hawk flapped his wings to fly, but this only
pulled his torn and bleeding legs, and overcome with the agony, he
fainted, and hung head downwards from the bough, suspended by his
sinews. Now this was exactly what Ki Ki had foreseen would happen. There
were a hundred places along the thrush's route where an ambush might
have been placed, as well as in the glade, but Ki Ki had observed that a
trap was set upon the old dead oak, and ordered his servant to strike
the thrush there, so that he might step into it afterwards, thus killing
two birds with one stone.

He desired the death of his servant lest he should tell tales, and let
out the secret mission upon which he had been employed, or lest he
should boast, in the vain glory of youth, of having slain the
ambassador. Cruel as he was, Ki Ki, too, thought of the torture the
young hawk would endure with delight, and said to himself that it was
hardly an adequate punishment for having neglected so golden an
opportunity for assassinating Choo Hoo. From the fate of the thrush and
the youthful hawk, it would indeed appear that it is not always safe to
be employed upon secret business of state. Yet Ki Ki, with all his cruel
cunning, was not wholly successful.

For the owl, as he went his evening rounds, after he had flown over the
orchard where Bevis saw him, went on up the hedge by the meadow, and
skirting the shore of the Long Pond, presently entered the wood and
glided across the glade towards the dead oak-tree, which was one of his
favourite haunts. As he came near he was horrified to hear miserable
groans and moans, and incoherent talking, and directly afterwards saw
the poor hawk hanging head downwards. He had recovered his consciousness
only to feel again the pressure of the steel, and the sharp pain of his
broken limbs, which presently sent him into a delirium.

The owl circling round the t