THE HOODED CROW 
hunter less scrupulous as to the shedding of 
blood, forestalled them, and they went empty 
to roost. No beast nor bird, from a sheep to a 
peewit, died between Commergar and Kilcool 
during the cold weather without some grey- 
saddled sentinel to watch over it. James 
Driscoll, the keeper, in whose beat the bogland 
lay, learned to know the work of Fionog-liat's 
band. Rabbits snared at dawn were disem- 
bowelled and torn by breakfast time, and after 
a day's shooting, of such snipe as had broken 
back wounded to settle behind the guns, 
scarcely one escaped the crows. Fionog-liat, 
to do his sagacity justice, did not like forays in 
the woodlands. He had rather go hungry in 
the open country than feast with the risk that 
unknown things might be watching him from 
the covert of the bushes. He roosted among 
trees because he could not sleep in the bogs like 
a duck, or in the hedges like a redwing, but 
he hated them none the less, and was always 
happiest out in the bare fields. His followers, 
however, were less wary, and hunger too often 
overcame their suspicions. Fionog-liat himself 
could walk all round an iron gin and draw away 
the bait without springing the trap, and he 
could detect the poison in a " doctored " carcass 
as readily as he distinguished between the 
keeper and his gun and the herd with his stick ; 
117 
