WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
feathers. Then the peregrine sat torpid. 
Sparrows and stares were mean game for such 
as he. Next day he would do better. 
It was a damp chilly morning, and although no 
rain fell the roofs were wet. The peregrine 
woke when the daylight sent a faint shaft across 
his perch, and stretching claw and wing flapped 
to the window-sill. With his strength his 
hunger had returned. The smoke rose straight 
up into the damp air from a hundred chimneys. 
From his lofty perch he looked out over a mile 
of grey roofs and lesser spires to where the river 
ran between dingy wharves under the masts of 
the ships. In the narrow streets slow carts 
crawled and men lounged and shouted. They 
looked very small and slow, and their voices 
sounded puny and far off. The peregrine 
circled up until he rose level with the great 
cross at the apex of the spire. Its gilded arms 
swung north and south as the wind blew, that 
seafaring men by the wharves on the river 
might look to St. John to tell them the weather. 
The peregrine who had first seen the sky from 
a crag five hundred feet above the Atlantic 
swell was at his ease at last. Far below him 
on the transept roof the daws sat in a row. 
They had not seen him : how should they 
look for danger from the sky ? Then a late- 
comer swung leisurely from the belfry window 
