CHAPTER LI. 



Ringdove. 



\AjHO has rambled 'on a bright spring morning 

 through the leafy dales and glens of this in 

 many respects highly favoured island of ours, and has 

 not paused for a moment to listen to the vibrating 

 sounds, repeated at brief intervals, that descended from 

 the tree tops all around, as if a legion of invisible 

 sprites (for not a bird is visible) were calling to each 

 other in sport, " Coo, coo-coo, coo-coo-coo, coo," or 

 maybe, when the note is every now and then inflected 

 more deeply than usual, in anger or perhaps in defiance 

 of each other? 



And who, a fortnight or three weeks later, when 

 taking his walks abroad in a copse, or plantation of 

 larch, beech, chestnut, or even of fir or oak, has failed 

 to notice, here and there, a slight platform of sticks, 

 carelessly laid on some horizontal branch at a varying 

 height of from 15 to 30 feet from the ground, be- 

 tween the interstices of which a couple of white eggs, 



