KING OF THE GARDEN. 37 
wind-gusts and its successor, he lilted a song 
of liquid hope—half-a-dozen notes only of per- 
fect, cheerful, confident, yet withal melancholy, 
hope. Then the eldest son of the father of 
all the wind-gusts came howling across the 
lawn, taking, as it seemed, almost a solid sheet 
of rain along with it. 
This blew back the lower branches of the 
rhododendron about thirty feet away. It was 
only for an instant, but long enough to show 
the pointed, shark-like, cruel head of a brown 
rat crouching. Then the spray swished back 
again, and all was as it had been. 
The robin hopped down to the ground 
between the laurel-stems. It was compara- 
tively dry here; you could hear the rustle he 
made as he hopped about on the crisp dead 
leaves. 
He was not alone in this place. The boldly 
blotched breast of a thrush showed for a 
moment; a blackbird’s beak flashed orange 
for a second in the centre of a ray of light 
filtering down from some gap in the foliage 
above; a worm came up—a very tiny rustling 
this—took hold of a leaf, and began to sink 
again, tail first. 
In a flash the robin was upon the worm, 
had seized it, and, leaning back upon his tail, 
tugged with all his strength. 
