THE SUN BEHIND 17 



pellets, and deflects the aim by placing the object 

 in a false position. 



If the crow had not spoken I might not have 

 known it for the bird it is. A bird that looks every 

 bit as big in this magnifying fog turns out to be a 

 bunting, rather bigger in fact than the greenfinches 

 and yellow-hammers in whose company he is on 

 the hedge skirting the cornfield. These bright 

 finches give the only bit of colour, and so brilliant 

 are they by contrast that the fog seems not to 

 have dimmed them by a tone. They sit rosy, 

 bright yellow, and olive-green on a rime-tipped 

 blackthorn, cut off from all background as com- 

 pletely as though this bunch of jewels had been 

 thrust through a curtain of brown paper. Then 

 the birds jump and disappear one by one, as though 

 so many sparks had flown upward and become 

 extinguished in the act of flight. 



On the hard ground out by the oaks the rabbits 

 are stamping their fog signals, and now and then I 

 see a ghostly white scut tremble for three bobs 

 till the mist swallows it up. If there were young 

 rabbits now, as there are not, how useful would 

 that follow-my-leader signal be to guide them in 

 the right way. It is essentially for use in the dusk 

 or in the all-day-long twilight under the bushes. 

 The roe-deer that haunt the smallest scrub of the 

 forest have a flag almost the size of a handkerchief, 

 and the bird that is best endowed with a signal to 

 be seen from behind is the bullfinch, that when it is 

 a little frightened is particularly given to travelling 



