io More Tales of the Birds 



anywhere and do anything at command not so 

 much because it was his duty, as because it was 

 the lot that life had brought him. He was 

 hardly well past what we now call schoolboy 

 years, and he went to fight the French as he 

 used to go to the parson's school, without asking 

 why he was to go. He might perhaps have told 

 you, if you had asked him the question, that 

 trudging along that miry road, heavily laden, and 

 wet with the drippings of the forest they had just 

 passed through, was not much livelier than trying 

 to form pothooks under the parson's vigilant eye. 



When they emerged from the forest into the 

 open, and began to descend the gentle slope into 

 the hollow by the farmhouse, the sun broke out, 

 as we have seen, and Bill, like the rest, began 

 to look about him and shake himself. Looking 

 up at the bit of blue sky, he saw two tiny 

 specks against it, and now for the first time the 

 Lark's song caught his ear. 



At any other moment it would have caught his 

 ear only, and left his mind untouched. But it 

 came with the sun, and opened some secret spring 

 under that red coat, without the wearer knowing 



