WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
sunbaked mud round the bank was left bare. 
The stream was quite dried up and no more 
clean water entered the Pool. As the other 
water-holes shrank more of the wood-people 
came to drink at the Dark Pool. All day a 
constant succession of birds arrived to bathe 
and drink, and at night, while the old moor- 
hens cried their vespers, the Grenogue vixen 
brought her cubs to cool their tongues there. 
The smaller the chicks were the easier it was 
to mind them, for they piped all the time, and 
if Cearc-uise missed a voice from the plaintive 
little symphony she turned back to look for it ; 
but as the blood-quills sprouted along their 
stumpy wings and the turkey-cock tints of 
their heads faded into the dull green and 
brown of flapperhood, so surely did their danger 
increase, for one or other would loiter behind 
the rest to pick up another morsel wholly 
regardless of the sinister rustling in the drop- 
wort tuffets at the waterside. Also, they grew 
so fast that Cearc-uise now found it hard to 
cover them all at nights, and one or other who 
could find no room used to sleep with the 
father. Karruck was a good parent, but father's 
love is not so solicitous as mother's love and it 
was his fault that the second chick failed to 
join the muster at dawn. 
The chick came to Karruck in the second raft 
24 
