WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
Mrs. Maguire herself he learned to treat with 
indifference. When the fowls trespassed too 
blatantly in her kitchen, she drove them out 
helter-skelter, and pelted them with potato- 
skins ; otherwise the birds, wild or tame, took 
no more notice of her than of the crumbling 
mud walls of the cottage. 
So March went shouting out with the jubilee 
of the equinoctial gales, and April, windy and 
sunny, came to the Glen. Then the last red- 
wings left for the north. One day a flock, 
perhaps twenty strong, passed the day in the 
field near the cottage. Shacaim heard them, 
and left the fowls in the wood. The other 
birds took no notice of him as he slipped 
timidly through the hedge and joined them. 
They ran restlessly here and there, merely pre- 
tending to eat, for the stirrings of the flight 
impulse worked in them, and with the weather 
the Feather Folk change their ways. In the 
new satisfaction of fellowship Shacaim ran 
from grass tuft to grass tuft as nimbly as any 
of them. As the sun dipped, Mrs. Maguire 
came out and called her hens to be fed, but he 
had forgotten all about the fowls. 
Seabac the Sparrow-hawk from Coolnabrock, 
came up the Glen on his evening "beat." The 
outermost bird of the redwing company marked 
him, and rose, calling softly. The next red- 
