138 
THE ROOK. 
pursued the rook after its escape from the^ cage, 
and that the wind which blew very strong that 
morning, had forced them both into a watery grave. 
I had stiil one rook left at the gamekeeper s. It 
was kept in a cage, which was placed on a little 
stand in his garden ; and I had given orders that 
upon no account was it to be allowed to go at large. 
The feathers remained firm at the base of the bill 
till the 15th of August; on which day the keeper 
perceived that a few feathers had dropped from the 
lower mandible, and were lying at the bottom of the 
cage. In a couple of weeks more, the lower man- 
dible had begun to put on a white scurfy appearance, 
while here and there a few feathers had fallen from 
the upper one. This is the purport of the keeper s 
information to me, on my return home from Bavaria. 
On the 31st of the same month, a terrible storm 
set in. By what the keeper told me, the night 
must have been as dark and dismal as that in which 
poor King Lear stood in lamentation, and exposed 
his hoary locks to the four rude winds of heaven. 
A standard white-hart cherry tree, perhaps the 
finest in Yorkshire, and which, for many generations, 
had been the pride and ornament of this place, lost 
two large branches during the gale ; and in the 
morning, when the keeper rose, he found the cage 
shattered and upset, and driven to the farthest 
corner of his garden. The rook was quite dead. 
It had lost its life, either through the inclemency of 
that stormy night, or through bruises received in 
the fall of the cage. Thus both the rooks were 
unluck}^ The old woman, no doubt, could clearly 
