282 ART AND PRACTICE OF HAWKING 



must be mounted again and the lure kept going. There, too, 

 is surely a glimpse of Queen herself, just vanishing over the 

 sky-line. She will be gone back to the place where her sister 

 is pegged down. Ten minutes' walking and running, and this 

 place is in sight. But no sign of Queen. Five minutes' more 

 luring, and at last a hawk comes in sight, — not making 

 directly for the lure, however, but hanging about and keeping 

 well away. Strange conduct in this merlin, which rather liked 

 the lure ! And now she begins waiting on, and soaring, — a rare 

 amusement with this very practical-minded hawk. Round and 

 round, farther and farther down-wind, away we go, Queen 

 hardly now even looking at the lure. Soon the hawk is too 

 far to keep in sight without very fast running. Had I been 

 fresh, probably I should have run hard. But I was far from 

 fresh. And the behaviour of Queen was very queer. 



Suddenly a new idea evolved itself. What if it was not 

 Queen at all, but a wild merlin ? It might be well to search a 

 bit, anyhow, where Queen was last seen in her own undoubted 

 personality. Searching, therefore, became the word — rather late 

 in the day. And on a patch of new-ploughed fallow, barely 

 distinguishable from the clods of brown earth, there stood my 

 lady, with a litter of feathers round her, calmly eating the 

 remains of a lark, and wondering what on earth I was about. 

 She had taken the lark with that very last stoop for which I 

 had seen her turn over, at the very edge of the sheepfold, and, 

 not liking the proximity of the dog, had carried her booty well 

 away, taking the direction from which she had come, as the dog 

 was on the other side. The wild hawk had been too late to 

 join in the flight, but had seen the kill, and had come down 

 perhaps with a vague idea of robbing Queen. Thinking better 

 of any such attempt — which would not have ended pleasantly — 

 she had been inquisitive as to the lure, and thinking the whole 

 affair rather singular, had soared about, waiting to see what 

 would happen next. 



Ruy Lopez was a jack which rather fancied himself, and had 

 something in his style of flying of the tactics of a haggard 

 peregrine. That is, he would start in a different direction from 

 the quarry, so that strangers would suppose he had no designs 

 upon it, and afterwards turn and make an immensely long stoop 

 at it all across the air. But on one occasion he had a very close 

 personal experience of the stooping of peregrines. He was lost ; 

 and no one knew anything of his whereabouts. It so happened 

 that James and William Retford, Major Fisher's falconers, were 



