A JUBILANT ROUT 227 



heard rather than seen, into its hole, and all is 

 silent and still, for the all too brief summer night. 



One sad and strange characteristic of the 

 swallow tribe I must not altogether pass over. The 

 affection of a mother for her young, which is found 

 in all the higher portions of Creation, is the most 

 powerful, the most beautiful may we not say the 

 most divine ? of all impulses whatsoever. It has 

 less of earth in it than heaven. Under its influence, 

 the mother who is naturally timid becomes reckless 

 in her courage ; she who is naturally pleasure-loving 

 is absorbed in her maternal anxieties ; she who 

 was most selfish becomes self-forgetting or even 

 self-annihilating ; yet, in the swallow tribe, there is 

 an impulse which is, on occasion, more imperious 

 even than the parental the impulse of migration. 

 A bird of passage, confined in a cage, will often 

 dash itself to death against the bars when autumn 

 comes ; and a pair of swifts, a pair of swallows, a 

 pair of martins, have, once and again, been known, 

 when the hour strikes for their departure, to leave a 

 late brood of callow young to perish in their nest, 

 rather than disobey its mysterious, its inexorable 

 demands. 



A few words, in conclusion, about the old tithe- 

 barn. It forms one side of the big stable-yard, 



