WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
the still cold air : the crows always kept one 
eye on their comrades' flight lest they them- 
selves should be cheated of their share of the 
spoil. Fionog-liat croaked, and flapped slowly 
up the slope towards the mountains, for farther 
on he had sighted an oblique smudge leading 
across a snowdrift, and there they picked up 
the trail. The snow was spattered with red, 
for the track was not half an hour old. Fionog- 
liat pitched on to a neighbouring wall, and as 
he did so the two remaining crows flapped 
overhead, croaking in anticipation of food. 
They held a council on the wall, with the little 
thin wind from the mountains ruffling the 
feathers from their lean bodies. It was their 
leader who first spied a moving dot on 
the mountain above them, and all four 
flew towards it. 
Where the 
fenced fields 
rise up the 
- spurs of Com- 
mergar to meet 
the no-man's- 
land of rock 
and gorse and heather which covers his 
summit, the crows overtook Geirr-fiad the 
Hare, who was plunging through the snow- 
drifts on three legs, with a raw red wound in 
120 
