WILD FIDELITY. 1938 
and falling on the wind in the eye of the red 
sun. 
One fell and rose. Another fell and rose. 
There was a demoniacal yell. Another. A 
thin, tenuous scream. Scream on scream. 
They were away now, flapping, unstable, in 
close company, one or other dropping and 
rising continuously. And it was the rabbit 
which ran beneath them, falteringly, dazed, 
blood-smeared. 
An hour later the wounded owl was no 
longer coughing, but motionless, big-eyed, 
melancholy-visaged, though alive. Her brown 
mate stood beside her, and under her beak lay 
the heart and other portions of the rabbit. 
Next morning the wounded owl yet breathed, 
and the rabbit’s heart (untouched) had been 
joined by three dead short-tailed field-mice 
and a mole. 
Next night she was not dead, that owl. 
The field-mice beside her numbered eight, 
and a rat had been added to the mole. 
But in the watch before the dawn her life 
went from her, her eyes glazed, she fell over, 
and her mate, with a rat in his hooked bill, 
watched beside the corpse. 
