108 THE WINGED SNAKE. 
Next morning the vicinity of the old shed 
and the whole overgrown, rampant garden 
resounded with an incessant ‘ Tui-tui-tui-tui !’ 
from bridal-decked fruit-tree to shimmering, 
daisy-carpeted lawn, from sombre laurel-hedge 
to the clumps of * pansy faces’ that peeped 
out beside the tottering gate. 
Then one old black rat—not a common 
brown vermin, such as we have learnt to call 
rat—climbing late home by way of an old 
apple-tree that leant against the shed, stopped 
suddenly by a hole in the decaying tree. 
He could not see inside, and there was no 
sound for his round elfin ears to hear, but he 
knew something was in there, all the same. 
He poked in his sharp, shark-like nose, and 
—was met by a point. So dark was it inside 
that it was difficult to say who owned the 
sharp point, unless—oh, whiskers! Clear, un- 
mistakable, distinct, and venomous, sounded 
the hiss of a snake, and the rat went away so 
quickly that one had really no time to notice 
that he had fallen over backwards and picked 
himself up again in the interval. 
Followed the rat a head, and the head was 
the head of a bird. The bird was lark-like 
in size, but nothing else. Its uniform was 
of reddish-gray, embroidered and lined and 
pencilled and ‘ticked’ in amazing fashion 
