THE SPARROW'S HOLIDAY 217 



style as they do it. This had so long been a 

 regular nightly performance that the cat counted 

 upon it as an excitement with a reliable place 

 in his daily programme. 



Quite suddenly one night in August the per- 

 formance did not take place. Pussy was in his 

 place, waiting for the excitement. Thinking that 

 the show was over for the day, and wishing to 

 gratify him by renewing it, I flung a stone into 

 the ivy, expecting to see the sparrows come out. 

 This had been done before, with success gratifying 

 to the feline spectator. On these occasions the 

 sleepers had always emerged with a rush, settled 

 on a neighbouring pear-tree, and after debate, 

 couched in tones of high resentment, had dropped 

 back to their places one by one and settled down, 

 after the inevitable amount of shoving, for the 

 night. But on this occasion nothing followed the 

 flinging of the stone, and when darkness fell not 

 a sparrow had taken its place. Next night it was 

 the same, and it became evident that my fifty 

 feathered tenants has deserted me. How was this 

 strange behaviour to be accounted for? I was 

 certainly not to blame. True, in seed-time I had 

 tried hard to capture and kill, as an example, 

 some members of the flock, then very active work- 

 ing havoc in the seed plots. But if that manifesta- 

 tion of hostility was resented at the time, it had 

 long been forgiven and forgotten. Perhaps some 

 owl had taken up his quarters in the ivy, and 

 rendered it untenable as a dormitory for small 

 birds. 



That that was not the explanation was made 



