46 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



a brambly hedge to emerge with scratched hands 

 and clothes torn like one that had been set upon and 

 mauled by some savage animal of the cat kind ; 

 and still the quaint figure eluded my vision. 



At last I began to have doubts about the creature 

 that emitted that strange penetrating call. First 

 heard as a bird-call, and nothing more, by degrees 

 it grew more and more laugh-like a long, far- 

 reaching, ringing laugh ; not the laugh I should 

 like to hear from any person I take an interest in, 

 but a laugh with all the gladness, unction, and 

 humanity gone out of it a dry, mechanical sound, 

 as if a soulless, lifeless, wind-instrument had laughed. 

 It was very curious. Listening to it day by day, 

 something of the strange history of the being, once 

 but no longer human, that uttered it grew up and 

 took shape in my mind ; for we all have in us some- 

 thing of this mysterious faculty. It was no bird, no 

 wryneck, but a being that once, long, long, long ago, 

 in that same beautiful place, had been a village boy 

 a free, careless, glad-hearted boy, like many 

 another. But to this boy life was more than to others, 

 since nature appeared immeasurably more vivid 

 on account of his brighter senses ; therefore his 

 love of life and happiness in life greatly surpassed 

 theirs. Annually the trees shed their leaves, the 

 flowers perished, the birds flew away to some distant 

 country beyond the horizon, and the sun grew pale 



