best to make you feel at home. You've no
idea what good times we have here, while you are far away."

"I tried 'stopping on' one year," said the third swallow. "I had grown
so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the
others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but
afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless
days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it!
No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night
I took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly
gales. It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great
mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I
forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped
down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste
of my first fat insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was
all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily,
lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had
had my warning; never again did I think of disobedience."

"Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!" twittered the other
two dreamily. "Its songs, its hues, its radiant air! O, do you
remember--" and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate
reminiscence, while he listened fascinated, and his heart burned
within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last,
that chord hitherto dormant and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these
southern-bound birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet
power to awaken this wild new sensation and thrill him through and
through with it; what would one moment of the real thing work in
him--one passionate touch of the real southern sun, one waft of the
authentic odour? With closed eyes he dared to dream a moment in full
abandonment, and when he looked again the river seemed steely and
chill, the green fields grey and lightless. Then his loyal heart
seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its treachery.

"Why do you ever come back, then, at all?" he demanded of the swallows
jealously. "What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little
country?"

"And do you think," said the first swallow, "that the other call is
not for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet
orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of
haymaking, and all the farm-buildings clustering round