AQUILA CHRYSAETUS. 67 



shoulders raised, he gives one bound, then away he sweeps on 

 his " holy" mission of murder, like the split eagles of Kussia, 

 striking down the weak until the strongest reigns, and what is 

 called the civilisation of humanity is complete. But woe to the 

 weak-winged ptarmigan or grouse, wounded hare or innocent 

 lamb, that comes within the swoop of those merciless talons ! 

 like the defenceless Turk at Ismail or Plevna, or the Pole at 

 Praga ; for again is the ear of mercy closed and the eye of pity 

 shut, and, for the time being, is Providence asleep. Let us go 

 with him, passing hill after hill, glen after glen, till, sweeping 

 round a jutting crag, from whose brow a stunted oak tree 

 springs, on which a pair of ravens have taken up their kindred 

 abode. Suddenly, with the harsh croak — between the grunt of 

 a boar and the song of a frog — so peculiar to this dark denizen 

 of solitude, they both rush after his feathered majesty, wheeling 

 and diving — now above, now below — as if to drive him away 

 from their rocky domain, disputing his right even to be there, 

 instinctively, by kindred feeling, well knowing his plundering 

 mission, and thus presume to let him know they know it. He 

 as instinctively shuns them, knowing that they, too, are robbers, 

 like himself, by nature, and tries to get out of their way. He 

 jerks and dives, and, with a proud but clumsy grace, escapes 

 from their petty persecution — like a bull from a gadfly, or a boy 

 from a wasp — not that he is afraid, but he is bent on his one 

 selfish object — plunder of life, and he has no time to waste with 

 them, for theirs is not what he seeks, knowing that " corbies 

 winna pick oot corbies' een." They still persist in their mimic 

 attack, until at last he feels annoyed, soars several yards above 

 them, turns right round as if about to swoop down upon the 

 nearest. This was the climax waited for, so they suddenly 

 wheel, croaking away as if in triumph that they had thus 

 successfully driven the king of murder away, and calmly, with 

 a discordant croak of satisfaction, return to the gnarled strong- 

 hold of their own domain. While he kept on his mission of 

 death, : sweeping down the slope of the mountain side, he paused, 

 with the embryo hover of the kestrel — a plover in the heath 

 below had caught his piercing eye. So had the all but fated 

 quarry his, for just as he fell like a thunderbolt to earth, the 

 plover, quick as lightning or a young partridge, sidled off, and 

 took shelter beneath the roots of a thick clump of heather, 

 eluding his intended clutch, but not until his outstretched wings 

 and tail had pressed the heath — his usual mode of saving him- 

 self from a rapid swoop. He rose and again sped on. He 



