the fine legs doubled
awkwardly together, the hind quarters and barrel rising, as it lay on
its side, in an unshapely lump, gray from the drenching dew, was a dead
horse. Along the top of the further wall a smart and audacious party of
jackdaws had stationed themselves, with much ruffling of gray, neck
feathers impudent squeakings and chatter. While a pair of carrion crows
hopped slowly and heavily about the carcass, flapping up with a stroke
or two of their broad wings in sudden suspicion, then settling down
again nearer than before.

"Go to her head, Timothy, and get her by as quietly as you can. I'll be
after you in a minute, but I'm bound to see what the dickens they've
been up to here."

As he spoke Dr. Knott hitched himself down from off the gig. He was
cramped with sitting, and moved forward awkwardly, his footsteps
leaving a track of dark irregular patches upon the damp grass. As he
approached, the jackdaws flung themselves gleefully upward from the
wall, the sun glinting on their glossy plumage as they circled and
sailed away across the park. But the crow who had just begun work in
earnest, stood his ground, notwithstanding the warning croak of his
more timid mate. He grasped the horse's skull with his claws, and tore
away greedily at the fine skin about the eye-socket with his strong,
black beak.

"How's this, my fine gentleman, in too much of a hurry this morning to
wait for the flavour to get into your meat?" John Knott said, as the
bird rose sullenly at last. "Got a small hungry family at home, I
suppose, crying 'give, give.' Well, that's taught better men than you,
before now, not to be too nice, but to snatch at pretty well anything
they can get."

He came close and stood looking meditatively down at the dead
race-horse--recognised its long, white-reach face, the colour and make
of it, while his loose lips worked with a contemptuous yet pitying
smile.

"So that's the way my lady's taken it, has she?" he said presently. "On
the whole I don't know that I'm sorry. In some cases much benefit
unquestionably is derivable from letting blood. This shows she doesn't
mean to go under if I know her; and that's a mercy, for that poor
little beggar, the baby's sake."

He turned and contemplated the stately facade of the house. The ranges
of windows, blind with closed shutters and drawn curtains, in the early
sunshine gave off their many panes a broad dazzle of white light.

"Poor little beggar," he repeated,