238 THE BIG BLOW. 
think it would have been enough for all time, 
and were almost ready to go to sleep on the 
spot, and freeze, and have finished with it. 
The rest, however, were not fools, or they 
wouldn’t have been rooks, and were not likely 
to surrender thus. 
It was about this time that the president 
of the elders, squatted craftily beneath a 
wind-bowed bush, and behind a hummock— 
he looked like a great sooty hen—opened 
both his eyes wide, and fairly jumped inside 
himself. He began to realise slowly that he 
was staring at what one might term, if not a 
miracle, at any rate a special ‘sending,’ and 
he nearly danced with excitement and joy as 
the fact hit him. 
All the time, without a stop, and apparently 
without an end, there were going past him in 
the blizzard, as a steady stream from east to 
west, a continuous procession of small birds. 
Singly, in pairs, in bunches of from three to 
eight, and in flocks, they fluttered past—the 
air was full of them. He could, even as he 
lay, see blackbirds and thrushes, fieldfares and 
redwings, skylarks, meadow and rock pipits, 
and goodness knows what besides. 
By this time several of the flock were not 
only down, but almost out, from exhaustion 
and famine. Even the old president himself 
