WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
threw himself into the darkness, and beat him- 
self against thorns in his flight. He believed 
that the whole rat regiment was upon him. 
The harbourage was no harbourage he fled 
back to the wood. 
Morning was golden and windy. Wreaths of 
white mist fled to the nor '-west. The bucket 
without a bottom which served Mrs. Maguire 
for a chimney was blown askew. She and her 
hens came out of the cottage together, and she 
fed them as she had done the night before. 
Shacaim saw them. Dawn found him still in 
the hedge rats there might be in that garden, 
but there was also food. He waited, and as 
before the yellow-legged fowls fed, and then, 
while they enjoyed a dust-bath by the hedge- 
side, Shacaim went down and breakfasted. 
On one side of the cabbage-patch was the bank 
where the rat colony lived ; on the other two 
was a straggling hedge which abutted on the 
wood. So many fowls had passed through it, 
that it was nothing but a series of run-ways, 
arched over by naked blackthorns. In the 
middle of the hedge flanked by two ivied thorns 
was a gap, which Mrs. Maguire had stopped 
with a skeogh. Beyond this, was a clearing in 
the wood where, after rain, water lay an inch 
deep on the dead leaves, and here the redwing, 
later, hunted industriously for drowned worms. 
154 
