THE KITE 161 



stream angler, sometimes grace its special features of interest. It once 

 limpid reaches, and trout there are in gave shelter to a noted Elizabethan 

 plenty. Down a twin valley roars outlaw ; it has harboured a Barcud's 

 another stream, now between alder- nest time out of mind. The outlaw 

 clad, fern-spangled banks the otter's is now but a name to be conjured with, 

 stronghold ; now between lofty preci- but a kite still sails round above it 

 pices of grey silurian, which in some with a pair of buzzards for com- 

 parts suggest man's handiwork, so pany. A crow darts out of the 

 cleanly cut are they. At the juncture oaks below and gives battle in mid 

 of the two streams a detached, coni- air ; a skirmish of winged outlaws 

 cally-shaped bluff, a mediator as it this, a guerilla warfare between two 

 were between two warring valleys, exiled clans. But the sable carrion 

 rears its rugged face. At its far ex- bird has matters all his own way, 

 tremity, where its lowest slopes lose for both kite and buzzard are 

 themselves in the hillocky pastures sadly devoid of courage, and the buz- 

 aligning the river, it is well timbered, zard's plaintive mewings mingled with 

 but the oaks are fewer and thinner the shriller scream of the kite and the 

 as the heights are reached. On its aggressively raucous voice of the crow 

 other side a precipitous wall of rock, weirdly break the hitherto almost 

 the haunt of fox and badger, dips oppressive silence. The former are the 

 almost sheer to the ever-bubbling first to leave ; the kite soon follows, 

 stream. Here the slightest sound is routed after a feeble pugilistic display, 

 noticeable ; the air is rarified to an and the three vanquished warriors 

 intensity. For example, how plainly are lost in the crest of a distant hill, 

 one can hear the barking of that collie, The crow, however, returns to his mate 

 itself a mere, ill-defined speck on the in the wood ; and surely the kite has 

 distant hillside ; how close the ring of family ties there as well ! At all events 

 an axe echoing from the wood on the the delighted watcher, if he would not 

 horizon. Here Nature is at her serenest chance losing the sight of a lifetime, 

 and best ; and here it is that the Red will do well to clamber down from 

 Kite still lingers. That is a glimpse his rocky perch, cross the river and 

 of the kite's haunt. Now about the enter the wood. 



bird itself. This thinly-planted, northerly oak 



That wooded bluff presents two wood has as yet hardly given so much 



13 



