’MID ICY SEAWEED. 195 
fallen—very hard indeed to see among the 
pebbles. In fact, the leaf was a bird. He 
ran anon, nimbly dodging out of the plucking 
reach of a wave, and as quickly and shrewdly 
running back again over the wet to see if the 
wave had cast up anything eatable. 
He was a quiet little chap, brown atop, 
with a blotchy, spotted breast; smaller, a 
trifle, than a lark. 
So very frail he looked that one wondered 
what chance he had there at all, dodging the 
sledge-hammer breakers and laughing at the 
wind. 
Yet he was born to the scene, that fragile 
one; had lived therein all his life; and, for all 
I know, and for all his actions seemed to 
show, revelled in it. He was a rock-pipit, 
cousin to that other, the common meadow- 
pipit, the ‘titlark’ of our fields. 
Cold it was as charity, but not too cold for 
him to poke about among the icy seaweed, 
and, leaping in the air, literally catch the 
elusive sandhopper ‘ on the hop.’ 
Bitter it was, but not too bitter for him to 
race down in water after the receding wave, 
and literally snatch some tiny shrimplet up 
under the jaws of Father Neptune’s thundering 
death. 
Famine was abroad in the land. Legions 
