CARDINAL 23 



distance, after so many changing and hardening years, 

 I experience a certain reluctance or heaviness of 

 heart in telling it. 



The warm bright months went by and it was 

 winter again — the cold season from May to August, 

 when the trees are bare, the rainy south wind blows, 

 and there are frosty nights, frosts that would some- 

 times last all day or even several days. Then it was 

 that I missed my bird and wondered often what had 

 become of him. Had he too flown north to a warmer 

 country with the swallows and other migrants ? 

 It could not be believed. But he was no longer in 

 the plantation — that little sheltering island of trees 

 in the level grassy sea-like plain ; and I should never 

 see him more or know what his fate had been. 



One day, in August, the men employed about 

 the place were engaged in a grand annual campaign 

 against the rats — a sort of spring-cleaning in and 

 out of doors. The shelter of the huge old foss, and 

 of the trees and thickets, wood-piles, many out- 

 buildings and barns full of raw or untanned hides, 

 attracted numbers of these unpleasant little beasts 

 and made it a sort of rats' metropolis ; and it was 

 usual to clear them out in early spring before the 

 new grass and herbage sprang up and covered the 

 ground. They were suffocated with smoke, made 

 deadly with brimstone and tobacco, pumped into 

 their holes. I was standing by one of the men who 

 was opening one of the runs after the smoking process, 

 when I caught sight of a gleam of scarlet colour in a 



