WINTER ASPECTS 219 



but, on the contrary, as they have friendly relations 

 with him and sit in the same chapel on Sundays and 

 regard him as a respectable member of the com- 

 munity, one can only suppose that nothing in the 

 way of cruelty to God's creatures can be hellish enough 

 to touch the St. Ives mind. 



But, as we know, there are some exceptions, and 

 I must now go back to the compassionate woman 

 and to a word she dropped when she spoke to me with 

 tears in her eyes of these cruelties. " I'm sure," she 

 said, " that if some one living here, who loves the 

 birds, would go about among the people and talk to 

 the men and boys and not be afraid of anything but 

 try to get the police and magistrates to help him, 

 he could get these things stopped in time, just as 

 Mr. Ebblethwaite did about the gulls." 



But who was Mr. Ebblethwaite, and what was it he 

 did about the gulls ? I had been off and on a long 

 time in the place and had talked about the birds 

 with scores of persons without ever hearing this 

 name mentioned. And as to the gulls, they were 

 well enough protected by the sentiment of the fisher- 

 folk. But it was not always so. On inquiry I found 

 twenty persons to tell me all about Mr. Ebblethwaite, 

 who had been very well known to everybody in the 

 town, but as he had been dead some years nobody 

 had remembered to tell me about him. It now came 

 out that the very strict protection awarded to the 

 gulls at St. Ives dates back only about fifteen to 

 eighteen years. The fishermen always had a friendly 

 feeling for the birds, as is the case in all the fishing 



