WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
II 
For three days the peregrine nursed his 
wounded side, husbanding his slowly returning 
strength among the dim-cobwebbed timbers of 
the spire. The winter sunshine poured in 
through the loopholes on the south face, and 
was succeeded by moonshine, brightened by 
frost. Great bloated spiders lived among the 
beams, and, undisturbed, spun their webs, thick 
as a silkworm's cocoon, upon the relics of their 
predecessor's industry. The tower might not 
be old as men reckon time ; by spiders' count- 
ing it had stood age-long. Big furry moths 
sometimes slept pressed against the walls, and 
the place was musty with the sickening odour 
of bats. Except when the clanging boom of 
the great clock made the spire ring, there was 
silence in the tower a silence so deep that it 
seemed as though not a spider could tread 
without being overheard. But all the day and 
night through, even when the air in the streets 
below seemed still, the wind sang round the 
tower, in and out of the dusty windows and 
round the great culminating cross, until its 
sibilant voice seemed to be the voice of the 
silence. 
At first the clangor of clock and bell drove the 
