WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
thing more congenial than revenge upon jack- 
daws. He settled himself down to enjoy the 
sleep of the full-fed and contented. And all 
that afternoon no daw came to squabble and 
mock on the face of the tower lest judgment 
should descend upon him also. 
It was growing dark when the peregrine came 
down ; the great clock boomed four. In the 
gravel close far below, Seumas Skerritt, the 
sexton, with the keys of the sacristy door in 
his hand, looked up, and against the sky had a 
glimpse of a buoyant silhouette. He was 
ordinarily a silent man Seumas Skerritt but 
as he watched the bird circle upwards he swore 
by this and that and good mankind that an 
eagle lolar had come to the tower. 
Ill 
Henceforward in this man-made cliff the 
peregrine lived well. But these pigeons of 
St. John, on whom he chiefly preyed, were soft 
and slow-flighted compared to those rock-bred 
birds of his native crags, whose wings, like his 
own, were toughened by a hundred struggles 
with the western gales, and he struck them 
down easily. Before the moon had waned, 
their ranks were thinned. The sluggards of 
the flock were gone, and the stray feathers 
5 
