22 THE COMPLETE SPORTSMAN 



innocent creature would never again wipe its 

 mouth on the perch I am not ashamed to con- 

 fess that I broke down and wept like a little 

 child. 



At the post-mortem examination which sub- 

 sequently took place it was found that the 

 deceased had been in the enjoyment of perfect 

 health and in the full possession of all its 

 faculties at the time of its premature demise. 

 It was always supposed that shortly after its 

 escape the parrot must instinctively have made 

 its way to the nearest moor, where, by its 

 natural eloquence, it had speedily ingratiated 

 itself with a covey of the local grouse. By 

 these it had probably been elected to the re- 

 sponsible post of leader; and it can only have 

 been under the stress of sudden panic that its 

 subjects could so far have forgotten the respect 

 they owed to their chief as to wring from it 

 those words of dignified protest which still echo 

 tragically in my guilty ears. 



Miss MacAllister was broken-hearted, and 

 though I never made the slightest attempt to 

 claim a single bawbee, and even suggested that 

 her darling should be embalmed at my expense, 

 I saw from the way in which she afterwards 

 avoided my society that she suspected me of 

 killing her pet for the sake of the reward she had 

 so liberally offered. My efforts to disabuse her 



