A WOODLAND MURDER. 49 



One it seemed fell down out of the nest to 

 the foot of the stump as the parents were making 

 their continuous noise almost on the ground 

 among the high grass of the steep bank. It 

 all appeared such a dastardly and cowardly 

 murder that it made me long for a gun to shoot 

 the owls. 



After the final visit it must have been getting 

 on for eleven, as it was past twelve by the time 

 I reached home and weighed the one trout in 

 the kitchen. The whole way back I felt 

 exactly as though I had really witnessed a 

 murder. You know the feelings walking home 

 alone when the river looks and sounds so deep 

 and all one's sins rise up out of the water, like 

 amorphous ghosts, and make you afraid to step 

 into what you know is only a shallow lest it 

 prove the bottomless pit : when the quiet 

 stretch of two foot water, embordered by the 

 dark fringe of rushes, becomes the tarn of the 

 House of Usher; and the gurgle of the stream, 

 and of the nightjar, blend into the suggested 

 sound of those huge winged mysterious dragon 

 flies that flutter up in a cloud out of the earth 

 and then sink back again, in the crescendoes 

 and cadences of Wagner's music. 



This pair of owls were not here last year. 

 Whether their species are always such marauders 

 I do not know, but am pretty sure the white 

 owl, which beats over the meadow precisely at 

 sunset, is not in the habit of tearing young 

 roosting birds out of their nest under the eyes 

 and wings of their distracted parents. Nature 



