342 THEFT OF FOWL. 



bled, and while the black carried in my luggage I placed 

 the wild-fowl upon the raised steps of the threshold. I 

 never left the place, and only took my eyes off the fowl 

 as I turned to my ambulance to unpack my things, but on 

 casting my eyes again over my birds I missed the only 

 couple of blue teal in my possession. It was unlucky for 

 the thief that his taste for these delicious birds made him 

 select the only two of one sort that I had, for, of course, 

 without enumeration, I missed their blue wings, and at 

 once exclaimed to my landlord that some one had taken 

 two of my birds. He said at first " They were all there 

 that I had put down ; >? but on my replying with consider 

 able confidence "that I must know better, for that the 

 only two blue teal I had were gone," I saw him cast a 

 very brief look out of the corner of his eye at a young 

 man I subsequently knew as his son, and that youth in 

 stantly disappeared. On this I dived into my ambulance 

 again as if going to the further end of it, but in reality, 

 when out of sight, I only faced about, when I beheld, 

 coming out of a side door of the building, a little way off, 

 the son of mine host carrying my blue teal behind him, 

 so I suddenly looked round the corner of the tilt of my 

 waggon, and said, " Oh ! all right, you've got my birds ; 

 I thank you ; " when the young fellow, with a shabby 

 leer, like a man who had just picked his own pocket, de 

 posited my birds along with the others, and said nothing. 

 " Liberty Hall here," I murmured to myself: "freedom 

 so much in the ascendant, I see, that each man makes free 

 with what in no w r ay belongs to him. All right ! I must 

 take it now that my things are unpacked, and, at all events, 

 I have one unusual comfort in America, I am about to be 

 robbed with civility. Hooray ! I might meet with a 

 ruder thief if I went elsewhere." 



