BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
45 
could yet picture him, as, aware of my cautious 
approach, he moved shyly behind the mossy trunk 
of some tree and waited silently for me to pass. A 
lean grey little man, clad in a quaintly barred and 
mottled mantle, woven by his own hands from some 
soft silky material, and a close-fitting brown peaked 
cap on his head with one barred feather in it for 
ornament, and a small wizened grey face with a 
thin sharp nose, puckered lips, and a pair of round 
brilliant startled eyes. 
So distinct was this image to my mind's eye that 
it became unnecessary for me to see the creature, 
and I ceased to look for him ; then all at once came 
disillusion, when one day, hearing the familiar 
high-pitched laugh with its penetrating and some- 
what nasal tone, I looked and beheld the thing 
that had laughed just leaving its perch on a branch 
near the ground and winging its way across the 
field. It was only a bird after all — only the wry- 
neck ; and that mysterious faculty I spoke of, 
saying that we all of us possessed something of it 
(meaning only some of us) was nothing after all 
but the old common faculty of imagination. 
Later on I saw it again on half a dozen occasions, 
but never succeeded in getting what I call a satis- 
fying sight of it, perched woodpeckerwise on a 
mossy trunk, busy at its old fascinating occupation 
of deftly picking off the running ants. 
! 
