138 THE ROOK. 



pursued the rook after its escape from the cage, 

 and that the wind, which blew very strong that 

 morning, had forced them both into a watery grave. 

 I had still one rook left at the gamekeeper's. It 

 was kept in a cage, which was placed on a little 

 stand in his garden ; and I had given orders that 

 upon no account was it to be allowed to go at large. 

 The feathers remained firm at the base of the bill 

 till the 15th of August; on which day the keeper 

 perceived that a few feathers had dropped from the 

 lower mandible, and were lying at the bottom of the 

 cage. In a couple of weeks more, the lower man- 

 dible had begun to put on a white scurfy appearance, 

 while here and there a few feathers had fallen from 

 the upper one. This is the purport of the keeper's 

 information to me, on my return home from Bavaria. 

 On the 31st of the same month, a terrible storm 

 set in. By what the keeper told me, the night 

 must have been as dark and dismal as that in which 

 poor King Lear stood in lamentation, and exposed 

 his hoary locks to the four rude winds of heaven. 

 A standard white-heart cherry tree, perhaps the 

 finest in Yorkshire, and which, for many generations, 

 had been the pride and ornament of this place, lost 

 two large branches during the gale; and in the 

 morning, when the keeper rose, he found the cage 

 shattered and upset, and driven to the farthest 

 corner of his garden. The rook was quite dead. 

 It had lost its life, either through the inclemency of 

 that stormy night, or through bruises received in 

 the fall of the cage. Thus both the rooks were 

 unlucky. The old woman, no doubt, could clearly 



