CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of your 

 approach. Hazard a long shot for you are right 

 behind him and a slug may hit him on the head, 

 and, following the feathers, split his skull-cap and 

 scatter his brains. Tis done and the eyry is or- 

 phan'd. Let the small brown moorland birds twit- 

 ter lo Pean, as they hang balanced on the bulrushes 

 let the stone-chat glance less fearfully within shel- 

 ter of the old grey cairn let the cushat coo his 

 joyous gratitude in the wood and the lark soar up 

 to heaven, afraid no more of a demon descending 

 from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, let them 

 die of rage and hunger for there must always be 

 pain in the world; and "'tis well when its endurance 

 by the savage is the cause of pleasure to the sweet 

 when the gore-yearning cry of the cruel is drowned 

 in the song of the kind at feed or play and the 

 tribes of the peace-loving rejoice in the despair and 

 death of the robbers and shedders of blood! 



Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all his days 

 shot an Eagle. That royal race seems nearly extinct 

 in Scotland. Gaze as you will over the wide circumfer- 

 ence of a Highland heaven, calm as the bride's dream 

 of love, or disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision 

 of a storm, and all spring and summer long you may 

 not chance to see the shadow of an Eagle in the sun. 

 The old kings of the air are sometimes yet seen by 

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