Outlaws. 163 



pride of a West-country village. They might have been 

 saplings when Monmouth marched his men through 

 the parish on the way to Sedgemoor. They were 

 known in all the district as ' the place where the great 

 white owl do bide.' In an evil hour the owner, with 

 an eye to filling his pocket, had the trees cut down. 

 Within the hollow trunk of that particular elin which 

 had been the home of the owls was a heap of bones 

 and fur the long accumulated relics of many a moon- 

 light foray. Careful search among these remains 

 brought to light some half-dozen skulls of small birds 

 amid a very charnel-house of crania of mice and moles. 



Another band of outlaws with characters worse even 

 than those of the birds of prey are the crow and his 

 dark companions. 



They are all of great use at times, but their lives are 

 mostly stained with rapine and murder. 



There is something weird and gloomy about the 

 king of the race the raven. It is hard not to read in 

 his dismal croak an omen of evil. His iron bill is a 

 terrible instrument of destruction to lambs in outlying 

 pastures of Exmoor ; and woe betide the unhappy 

 beast that, worn out with age and hardship, sinks 

 down exhausted on the open moorland. In this case, 

 however, superstition is a powerful factor in his preser- 

 vation. 



The countryman of the Mendips, where the sable 

 bird is still sometimes seen, willing enough to risk his 

 neck iii plundering the cliff-built nest of hawk or rock 



