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CHAPTER XXI 
“NOT ALWAYS TO THE STRONG” 
: be the little black sentry-box where I pass the night 
there are two or three books belonging to its more 
permanent occupant. One of them is a British Bird 
book, and so last night when I got to bed I turned 
up the peregrine falcon. The author finds it the most 
infallible of all the hawk and eagle tribe ; the one that 
least often misses its prey, and never attempts more 
than it is capable of performing. Never in his ex- 
perience, I think he says, has he seen it strike in vain. 
I have not had his experience—I wish 1 had—but from 
the little I have seen and what I hear now from an 
eye-witness, I cannot help thinking that, in this respect, 
the peregrine does not differ greatly from others of 
his kind. It is there and thereabouts with him, I 
suspect, for under my very nose, down in Suffolk, he 
was foiled by a partridge in the most discreditable 
way, and here in the Shetlands he is quite capable of 
not succeeding with ordinary dovecote pigeons, as I 
will show, not upon my own evidence, unfortunately, 
for I wish I had seen it, but upon that of a lady, well 
known here, who saw it and told me of it herself. I 
got to Balta Sound last Sunday, and on the following 
Monday I called upon Mrs. Saxby at her pretty little 
white comfy cottage, who took me to look at a dovery 
which, since my last coming, she had had put up in 
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