WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
failed to see him, and before the first-comer 
had time to gulp three billfuls, the rest of the 
band were circling round him eager for a 
share. The wounded snipe, squatting by a 
dyke in the bog, cowered down when the 
crows flew between him and the sky ; but the 
eyes of the marauders were as keen as their 
bills, and the covert of sod or rush-tussock 
availed him nothing. They dogged the track 
of the fox's hunting, and as the month went on 
and the cold and its handmaid famine tightened 
their grip, even Fionog-liat himself deigned to 
squabble with 
the rooks near 
the farmsteads 
for grubs and 
such small deer, 
which ordinarily 
he despised. All 
day long the east 
wind blew across 
the bog from the 
mountain. The scanty grass blackened before 
it, and the buds on the gorse bushes were 
blighted. 
Fionog-liat chose the beat which lay along the 
lower slopes of the mountain, and no crow in 
the fields below could stoop unobserved by his 
leader's keen eyes. The numbers of the band 
112 
