THE GUN 115 



the robbers ended all at once. Of that sable band 

 perhaps this bird alone escaped. Season after season 

 it could be heard calling for a mate. 



The carrion crow is a hardy villain. That hammer 

 head and coarse, wicked bill tell their own tale. 

 Robbery, often with violence, must be his frequent 

 trade. He is black as he is painted. He strikes 

 down the wounded thing a mercy ; but he hunts 

 and strikes down the young and weakling too. How 

 can a gamekeeper's hand not be against the crow ? 

 Yet the escape of this one out of the doomed band 

 rather appealed to me. I often asked about him, 

 and felt a secret small pleasure in the news that 

 he still lurked in the wood deeps, refusing any 

 bait. And, after all, the harm a single crow can 

 do in a great wood is limited. Last autumn, how- 

 ever, the place had three or four crows once more, 

 and the keeper thought there must have been a 

 nest in the spring. Perhaps the solitary found a 

 mate by March and nested in the hidden heights 

 of the spruce firs. It is about these noble ever- 

 greens that one of the buzzards has been some- 

 times seen, or a passing peregrine that may take 

 toll of the wood pigeons. 



The keeper tells me of the wariness of the carrion 

 crow with wonder and amusement. There is little 

 indeed about wild creatures to interest the wood- 

 wise worker more than their craft ; the restless 

 suspicion the stoat has of steel teeth slily sprinkled 



