SAINT OUIDO. 23 



— it has been here ever so long, it came here first 

 just after the oak the lightning split died. And it 

 has been rolled about by the ploughs ever since, and 

 no one has ever seen it; I thought it must go into 

 the ditch at last, but when the men came to hoe one 

 of them knocked it back, and then another kicked it 

 along — it was covered with earth— and then, one day, 

 a rook came and split the clod open with his bill, 

 and pushed the pieces first one side and then the 

 other, and the coin went one way, but I did not see ; 

 I must ask a humble-bee, or a mouse, or a mole, or 

 some one who knows more about it. It is very thin, 

 so that if the rook's bill had struck it, his strong bill 

 would have made a dint in it, and there is, I think, 

 a ship marked on it." 



*' Oh, I must have it ! A ship ! Ask a humble-bee 

 directly ; be quick ! " 



Bang ! There was a loud report, a gun had gone 

 off in the copse. 



"That's my papa," shouted Guido. ''I'm sure 

 that was my papa's gun ! " Up he jumped, and 

 getting down the ditch, stepped across the water, 

 and, seizing a hazel-bough to help himself, climbed 

 up the bank. At the top he slipped through the 

 fence by the oak and so into the copse. He was in 

 such a hurry he did not mind the thistles or the 

 boughs that whipped him as they sprang back, he 

 scrambled through, meeting the vapour of the gun- 

 powder and the smell of sulphur. In a minute he 

 found a green path, and in the path was his papa, who 

 had just shot a cruel crow. The crow had been eating 

 the birds' eggs, and picking the little birds to pieces. 



