Ill 



By this time all the birds were breeding, some 

 already breeding a second time. And now I be- 

 gan to suspect that they were not quite so un- 

 disturbed as the old dame had led me to believe; 

 that they had not found a paradise in the village 

 after all. One morning, as I moved softly along 

 the hedge in my nightingale's lane, all at once 

 I heard, in the old grassy orchard, to which it 

 formed a boundary, swishing sounds of scuttling 

 feet and half-suppressed exclamations of alarm; 

 then a crushing through the hedge, and out, al- 

 most at my feet, rushed and leaped and tumbled 

 half-a-dozen urchins, who had suddenly been 

 frightened from a bird-nesting raid. Clothes 

 torn, hands and faces scratched with thorns, hat- 

 less, their tow-coloured hair all disordered or 

 standing up like a white crest above their brown 

 faces, rounded eyes staring — what an extraor- 

 dinarily wild appearance they had! I was back 



i8 



