226 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



being altogether unconscious when sleeping. If, 

 however, this early waking were voluntary, I 

 should probably say that it was for the pleasure 

 of listening to the crowing of the cocks at that 

 silent hour when the night, so near its end, is 

 darkest, and the mysterious tide of life, prescient 

 of coming dawn, has already turned, and is send- 

 ing the red current more and more swiftly 

 through the sleeper's veins. I have spent many 

 a night in the desert, and when waking on the 

 wide silent grassy plain, the first whiteness in the 

 eastern sky, and the fluting call of the tinamou, 

 and the perfume of the wild evening primrose, 

 have seemed to me like a resurrection in which 

 I had a part; and something of this feeling is 

 always associated in my mind with the first far- 

 heard notes of Chanticleer. 



It was very dark and quiet when I woke; my 

 window was open, with only a lace curtain before 

 it to separate me from the open air. Presently 

 the profound silence was broken. From a distance 

 of fifty or sixty yards away on the left hand 

 came the crow of a cock, soon answered by 

 another further away on the same side, and then, 

 further away still, by a third. Other voices took 



