L. A jN L> A JN JJ .W A T Jl, K . 
June b, iyi5. 
Soon thers were few leaves left. 
Some fell without a breath to quicken tliem (their hue 
alone foreshadoc/uig their f::te), slowly, reluctantly, on wind- 
less evenings. 
Others were whirled on high by northern gales, and 
swept to earth with swish and crack and rattle, which drove 
the red harea headlong from their forms out to the open 
plough. 
Sadness and Heaviness and Pain had crept into the 
forest — and Margot and her sisters heard their voices. In- 
stinctively they liuddled up together. Dawn found them 
preening ruffled, steamy plumes in readiness for flight. 
Dawn failed them East and scattered them, like wide- 
flung seed, on i.e.. . . , plough, aud stubble. The change 
of season brought a. change of habit. They sought afield, by 
choice deliberate, food they might yet have found within the 
forest. The open ground was sunniest. But tliere was other 
cause of melancholy, which saddened them and warped their 
joyous round. 
The fates had leagued against them with the times, and 
brought a night dis.istrous to the race. 
Margot had winged belated to the pool, whose banks 
were shadowed by the curtseying willows, whose surface mir- 
rored, in a ccpper glow, the passing of the sun. 
Her beak still stickled with the haws, she dropped 
among the sisterhood, to drink her fill, and there await the 
summons to the roosting-place. She lit on strange commo- 
tion, took flight to view it better, and poised above a tumult 
of her kin. 
Something was wrong with one of them — with two— 
with three. They could not take to wing. • 
Their whipcord legs crooked under them, then lashed 
out straight to fling their bodies upward. But no light hop 
or forward flutter followed. Their feet were glued to earth. 
They bobbed and curtsied pitiably, with flapping wings, with 
screaming, anguished cries. 
Margot drew closer, curious. 
What horror had befallen them ? 
By slow degrees and painfully one prisoner rai.sed a foot. 
The claws lay close together, stiffened downwards, and from 
thj extreme and of them a slimy tentacle reached earth, fining 
or thickening as the leg compelled, but never wholly sun- 
dered. The other leg stayed fast. To lift it needed leverage 
from its fellow. To lower this meant glueing it afresh. 
The ill-fated three had reached the pond the first, had 
chosen the three obvious shelving bays. 
The others, Margot with them, dispersed about a circling 
stone-built rampart, new margin to the pool since yesterday. 
On this they hunched themselves, and with strained necks 
and over-toppling bodies, risked drowning in the straggling 
weeds which masked the muddy depths. 
They quenched their thirst laboriously, with cough and 
chohe aud splutter, then turned to gaze in wonder at the 
captives. Vainly they circled round and over them. Their 
presence brought no comfort, no relief. The luckless ones 
stUJ voiced their woes incessantly, still danced, left-right, left- 
Tight, their mad mark-time. 
Behind a spur of purpling cloud a blood-red sun went 
down. Clear from the forest rang the nightly summons 
Ihey must be gone, must quit the pool, and seek the chosen 
shelter. Slowly, unwillingly they turned, and, as they left 
the pool-side oae by one, the abandoned captives whirred 
their helpless wings, and dai^ced distraught, and screamed 
forlorn. 
At sunrise they were back again. A touzled feather here 
.-uid there, a nibbled bone, a skull, a claw, told of grim hap- 
penings in the murk of night. 
Henceforth, for all the magpie race, the pool was cursed. 
No summer s heat could tempt them to its coolness, to dibble 
or to preen themselves, or bathe their glossy feathers. 
The days lagged past, each with new trials and set-backs 
For now the food was dwindling. The ripened fruits were 
rotting on the ground. The insects died or hid themselves 
behind the frost-proof armour of the bark. 
Margot and Margofs sisters must need support them- 
selves with chance-found gleanings. Yet self was never • 
uppermost. Above self towered in paramount strength the 
interest of the race. It was as though some shrill-voiced imp 
was spokesman of their conscience. Each find was advertised 
at large, with strident call inviting all and sundry From 
every quarter of the wild winged up the starved community 
llien and then only might the meal begin— with squab- 
biings round a food-scrap. ^ 
A fog obscured day's passing. Alert upon her leafless 
bough sat Margot, sickened of her fruitless hunting. Her head 
twitched side to side. This way and that her beady eyes 
peered curious. The call-note sounded from a brake of thorn, 
whose foliage, sheltered by the holm oak's strength, still cluni 
to it forlornly. Margot sizzed instant answer; then soared 
above the network of the boughs, and marked two others of 
her kind, who quickened to the sound. 
She tacked her flight to theirs, and, as she crossed the 
clearing after them, met smoke-wreath and the musty stench 
of powder. The thunder-clap had had no meaning for her : 
the stinking smoke was ominous. It brought back memories 
of the hare. 
Onward she flew. Again the thunder crashed. Again 
the slow stench met her. 
She pressed her flight; the three sped on in line; and, 
for the third time, boomed the deafening roar. 
But this time there was more than stench and sound. 
There was a lurid spurt of flame, which lit the darkening 
coppice: a whizz of hail about the three, who now flew close 
together. The foremost of them checked, and spun, and 
dropped. 
A whip-lash cut at Margofs breast, and swept her off 
her balance. Instinctively she swerved to right herself, and 
with changed course flew on. 
But she had seen. 
Two visions pieced together in her mind; two stoopin" 
men with smoking tubes slung round them : two soft limp 
forms picked up by callous hands. The first had been a hare; 
the second was a magpie. 
And Margot understood. 
Never before had she seen her own blood. It welled up 
slowly, crimson drops of it, like berries of the rowan. She 
watched her clean breast feathers mat together, and staunch 
the clotting flow. 
From flesh wound she learnt fear of Man. Mu.st she fear 
magpie also? What of the sister, whose call-note had lured 
her to such welcome ? She heard her still, and from the self- 
•bame brake — clear, unmistakable. No sigh of wind disturbed 
the evening's calm; no rustle of slow-dying leaf waved from 
the bough's extremity its message of farewell. 
The call sped forth untrammelled. Pyets and jays and 
blackbirds flocked towards it. At quickened intervals rang 
out the thunder of the gun. Only the wary veterans held 
aloof, and crows, whose ears discerned the man-made decoy. 
Margot had not the wit of crow, nor even veteran mag- 
pie's wit. To her henceforth all men were surely gunners, 
all sticks and staves their implements of murder. 
Sportsman she shunned, and wayfarer alike. 
Daily her mind brought knowledge of fresh dangers. 
There was the owl, an enemy of all nestlings, and so an enemy 
of the race. And oh I the mobbing of him. Shipwrecked in 
broadest daylight, rolling his eyes, wing-spreading, backed 
against the trunk. The day-birds flocked to haze him, with 
whirr of wing, with mocking, strident screams. The red- 
breast all aflame with insolence; the ebon crows with hungry, 
prying eyes; the linnets, finches, tit-mice — all letting " dara 
not" wait on "will." 
And suddenly the racket of them ceased. Their circling 
widened to a prudent distance, and, in a moment, fined afield. 
A crow had signalled danger. Thundered the gun, and two 
that loitered, dropped — the victims of Man's guile once more, 
the dupes of a stuffed enemy. 
The sameness of the dreary, trailing days was broken 
by the snow. All night it fell, slow, feathery, dreamy, 
noiseless. It shrouded earth; it choked the water-holes; it 
limned each bough in white, against the morrow's blue. 
Margot could find no food in it, so winged towards the 
village. She sneaked behind the orchard fence, she scanned 
the paths, she pried about the walls. 
Patches of soil the snow had not yet mantled lay on the 
hedge's shelter-side. She flew to these at first, glancing 
askance towards the shuttered houses. A fresh turned mole"- 
hill starred the white, and from it whiffed the scent of flesh. 
Good fortune tliis — a lump of bacon-fat, food for one day at 
least. She drove her beak at it and tugged. 
(To be continued.) 
MR. HILAIRE BELLOCS WAR LECTURES. 
Mr. Hilaire Belloc will give a further series of three lectures 
on the War at Queen's Hall, London, on Tuesday, June 22 • 
Tuesday, July 13; Tuesday, July 27. Seats may now be booked. 
MR. L. BLIN DES.HLED'S LECTURES. 
Ti/ T,"^o }}\»^^rated lectures on " The Role oj Aircraft in the 
War will be given at the Polytechnic, Regent Street, as jollows : 
Lecture /.. June 17. on " Aircrajl as an Auxiliary Arm." Lee- 
("relL. June 24, on ''Aircrajt on the Offensive." Both lectures 
wilt begm at 8 p.m. Tickets can be obtained at the Polytechnic. 
""""'"^ '^ "" v^oxoiuA ilous. P^. xi.a Co., Lx.., luaor .t.eet. Wha.W., Londou, E.G. 
