A SUMMER-DAY TRAGEDY 141 



" Come up, come up ! " but only succeeded in 

 communicating to their progeny a feeling that 

 all was not well. But if all was not well, they 

 said, surely the safest place was at home. Then 

 came a horrid, disconcerting bang, and a glossy 

 young bird flew downward with a strange direct- 

 ness and struck the ground with a sickening thud. 

 All the young ones cried out, using up the words 

 they knew ; and they had just begun to go over 

 their repertoire a second time, the better to express 

 their surprise, when that dreadful noise came 

 again, and down went number two. And then, 

 amid lamentable cries from tree -top and sky, the 

 work of destruction went on fast and furious. 

 Young rooks strewed the ground, some dead, some 

 dying, and in pauses of the fusillade the shooters 

 seized the dying and wrung their necks. Perhaps 

 it was those seizures that at last caused the sur- 

 vivors dimly to realize the significance of the 

 parental admonitions. It was bad to think that 

 some unrealized power might cause them to fly 

 down in that strange, headlong fashion, but worse 

 still to think of being handled by those monsters 

 below. So, a sorry score, they betook themselves 

 to the wing and joined the crying host aloft. 



A rook -shooting at the end of the nesting season 

 is one of the most melancholy functions of rural 

 life. To begin with, it takes the community just 

 at the grand moment of accomplishment. They 

 have worked incessantly for two months at the 

 labour of bringing up their families, and chattered 

 about every incident in the process with the volu- 

 bility of the true social animal. Parental and 



