Greeks, wherein were monsters of all kinds, dog-faced men, beings as high as one's fist, and lotus-eaters and troglodytes or cavedwellers, "the swiftest of men, who feed on lizards and serpents." A quail recalls

Alcibiades and his pet; we see Lesbia in our impudent house sparrow; and echoes of some of Virgil's sweetest verses float to our ears as the rock dove swoops out of its fastness by the sca.

A truce to classic recollections: let us pass on to the middle ages. The birds most endeared to the men of those days are the falcon family, especially the jer-falcon and the peregrine. Their glories fall on the heron, but too often a victim to their skill. Indeed, hawking was a sport inseparably connected with the domestic and social life of our ancestors, and therefore colours all our pictures of mediævalism. Shakespeare draws, largely upon its technical terms, and Othello, whistling off his love like a "haggard" down the wind to prey on fortune, though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings," only speaks intelligibly to those who have dabbled a little in the noble science. The pheasant, the peacock, and the swan were birds held in peculiar estimation in the middle ages, both on account of their beauty and their value for the table. In the Romances and fabliaux the peacock is called the "noble oiseau," the "nourriture des amants." When Philip the Good was at Lisle in 1454, a magnificent pageant was exhibited before, him called the 'fête du faisan," in which an image of that bird, forming the central figure of a procession of masquers and dancers, was introduced with much ceremony.

66

How large is the field that opens to us in speaking of the folk-lore connected with birds! We will begin with the wryneck, which, so long ago as the Roman times, used to be bound on a wheel and slowly turned round by witches, who muttered meanwhile many an incantation to bring recreant lovers back to their allegiance. It is to be hoped that just when the owl family is beginning to be scarce amongst us, truer notions are prevailing, and people will no longer associate owls with death and bad fortune, much as the Oxenham family had a tradition of the white bird which used to hover over its members before their death. In very many places, however, the night-jar still has the credit of sucking the milk from cows. The green woodpecker with its laugh, and the harsh scream of the missel-thrush, are in some counties popular prognostics of rain. A whole chapter of credulity might be written on the origin of the bernicle goose. Even the swift, the most curious of our swallows, has not

escaped the evil eye of superstition; a common country name for it is "deviling," because it never sets its foot on the earth, and because of its weird flight and shrill screaming as it careers round old church towers. Milton gives this ill prominence to the cormorant, from its green eyes and foul gluttony. All the crow family enjoy a dark fame. The raven is the awe of his district, and a lesser degree of this feeling attaches itself to the carrion crow. Innumerable are the proverbs in which jackdaws figure as popular examples of craft and forethought. As for the gull, few birds are so quick-sighted, and its name is an instance of etymology going by contraries. Its inoffensiveness is the side of its character which comes out in our use of the name for a silly person. While speaking of etymologies, how few there are who suspect the origin of petrel is, as its scientific name shows (thalassidroma), St. Peter's bird.

We need only make a passing allusion to the many sacred associations connected with birds. The cross-bill, for instance, has its name from a legend most readers will remember. There is a very pretty Norwegian legend too, about the manner in which the woodpecker obtained the red feathers on its head. More striking still is the Breton reverence for the redbreast. The confidence with which this bird approaches our dwellings in winter endears it to us, but even this would hardly atone for its pugnacity and quarrelsome disposition, were it not for our early reminiscences of the part it played in the tragedy of the Babes in the Wood. A bird always mythical and now only known by the fireoffice to which it lends so appropriate a title, the phoenix, was especially holy in the eyes of the early Christian fathers, who almost without an exception use it as a symbol of the resurrection. The pelican is another bird connected with Christian art, and so is the eagle, as our numerous eagle-lecterns testify.

Geology is not rich in associations of birds ; still, as we look at the relics of the Dodo in the Ashmolean Museum, a bird which has become extinct in the Mauritius during historic times, we are forcibly reminded of the dinornis, the gigantic extinct bird of New Zealand. There is a curious "feathered fossil," too, found in the lithographic stone of Solenhofen, which differs in the arrangement of its bones from all known birds; interesting from having puzzled palæontologists. It has soared in pride of place far above the ken of the flightiest of them, we read, "not only in the structure of the tail, but in having two, if not three, digits in the hand." No plain man need be

Each locality and each season has its own bird to the ornithologist. If summer in town is roughly represented by the martin and chimney-swallow, many cherished reminiscences of coast scenery are flecked with the little black and white cliff swallows. We always connect the long mud flats of the Humber during winter with the presence of the Royston crow, which spends that season with us in the eastern counties of England. The sprightly water-ousel speaks of long sunny days by the Devonshire rivers in spring. Who does not hate the shore-lark with its melancholy wail, recalling those endless wet days at the seaside, when in desperation one takes to reading Bradshaw. The wheat-ear is inseparably connected in our mind with the verdant Welsh uplands where we first made its acquaintance. Who could think of the flycatcher anywhere but by the boundary of his lawn,

With the bean-flower's toon,
And the black bird's tune,
And May and June.

Cicero's famous eulogy of literary pursuits might be parodied to suit ornithology; even at night the latter science is not forgetful of her votaries. How often have we dallied with "ambrosial night" in the western counties, where the shadowy "combes " were flooded with moonlight, listening to the distant chirring of the goat-sucker, or challenging the lovelorn owl with "tuwhit, tuwhoo! as he flitted past to woo the baker's daughter of whom Shakespeare tells us. Nor can we forget wakeful nights in the midland counties, every minute of which was regularly numbered by the monotonous creaking of the landrail amongst the tedded hay on the hillside. Lincolnshire, besides the flights of ducks and geese that rustle through the air on wintry nights, has its special charm in the wailing notes of the plover. High over head you hear their plaintive cries, and if they astonish a stranger they may serve to remind him, if a scholar, of Homer's ghosts that flitted screaming through the shades, or of Celtic colonists of Breton, who, according to Procopius, were compelled to return in a disembodied state after death for interment in Cornwall, and wailed as they passed over the Channel to their long sad home.

Another curious subject connected with ornithology is the different impression some of our common birds make upon us from that which they made upon the ancients. Take the nightingale for instance: it had only melancholy

The light-winged Dryad of the trees

That sings of summer in full throated-ease. Again, we always associate the swallow with the return of spring, and when it leaves we wish good-bye to sunshine and summer; it was a bird full of sad associations to the pensive Greek, and even the practical Roman. The Rhodians welcomed it to their bright isle with songs, much as our children imitate the cuckoo in their glee. No greater contrast to our cheerful home life, where the swallow's twitter round its "procreant cradles " is so delightful to the early waker, can be found than in the beautiful yet gloomy lines of Dante

Nell' ora che comincia i tristi lai

La rondinella pressa alla mattina,
Forse a memoria de' suoi primi guai.

The kindly feeling of modern social life has little in common with the political life of the stirring days of the past; our very birds are affected by the change.

In these few specimens of the varied modes different associations, we have said but little in which ornithology is bound up with far on the thousand charms its study affords to a retired domestic life. Perhaps only they who really appreciate country pursuits and country objects can thoroughly enter into the fascination of ornithology. To such an one, on his lawn, on the moor, by the murmuring beck, where the beetling crags are lashed for ever by the sea, in the most solitary or the most crowded places, are his friends. By frequent observation he can become wonderfully familiar with their curious ways. A rookery, or an old tower tenanted by jackdaws and starlings, is a constant source of delight to him. It is quite possible for a city dweller to become Wordsworth's poetan ornithologist, but we prefer to liken him to

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a shady grove;
And you must love him, ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love.

With the melancholy Jacques his life should be exempt from public haunt, but he should also, like Amiens, be able to

Tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat.

He must learn to recognise his feathered friends by their call, their flight, their gait; when this one comes, when that one goes; when this kind ceases to sing, when that family quits the fields for more domestic haunts: such

CHAPTER LIII.

JUDITH'S STORY.

In the twilight of the winter's evening, in the drawing-room of Lady Jane's house, Frederick Grey was sitting with Lucy Chesney. The removal from Mr. Carlton's that day did not appear to have hurt her, she seemed the stronger for it, and though Judith kept assuring her that she ought to go to her chamber and lie down, Lucy stayed where she was.

The interview was a gloomy one. It was Frederick Grey's farewell visit, for he was going back to London the following day. But the gloom did not arise from that cause, but from another. Lucy had been telling him something, and he grew hot and angry.

The fact was, Lady Jane, in her perplexity and tribulation at finding the deceased lady, Mrs. Crane, to have been Clarice Chesney, had that morning dropped a word in Lucy's hearing to the effect that the discovery might be the means of breaking off the contemplated marriage. Of course, Lucy was making herself very miserable, and her lover was indignant.

"On what grounds?" he chafed, for he had rather a hot temper. "On what grounds?"

"Jane thinks it will not be seemly that we should marry, if the mistake that brought Clarice her death was made by Sir Stephen. The medicine, you know."

"Jane must be getting into her dotage," he angrily exclaimed. "Sir Stephen never did make the mistake. Lucy, my darling, be at ease we cannot be parted now."

Lucy's tears were dropping fast she was weak from her recent illness. To marry in opposition to Jane could never be thought of, and Jane was firm when she once took a notion into her head. In the midst of this, Jane came in from her visit to the little dead boy at Tupper's cottage, and Frederick Grey spoke out his mind somewhat warmly. Judith, who entered the room to take her lady's bonnet, stood in surprise and concern : her sympathies were wholly with Frederick Grey and Lucy. He had not observed Judith

enter.

"Oh, my lady," she exclaimed, impulsively, "it would not be right to separate them. Should the innocent suffer for the guilty?" "The guilty? the guilty?" mused Lady Jane.

"How are we to know who is guilty?" Judith stood still, a strange expression of eagerness, blended with indecision, on her white face. She looked at Lady Jane, she looked at

66

Oh, Judith!" exclaimed Frederick Grey, reproachfully, while Jane dropped her head upon her hand, and Lucy gazed around, wondering if they had all gone scared. "And you have suffered my father to lie under the suspicion all these years!"

"I did not dare to speak," was Judith's answer. "Who was I, a poor humble servant, that I should bring an accusation against a gentleman-a gentleman like Mr. Carlton, thought well of in the place? Nobody would have listened to me, sir. Besides, in spite of my doubts, I could not believe he was guilty. I thought I must have made some strange mistake. And I feared that the tables might have been turned upon me, and I accused."

Whatever she knew, and however long she might have suppressed it, there was no resource but to speak out fully now. She took up her position against the wall, partially hidden by the folds of the crimson curtains from what little light the fire gave. Lucy sat forward on the sofa as one dazed, Lady Jane's face was still shaded by her hand, Frederick Grey stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece.

"I will not be Mr. Carlton's accuser," she began. "No, my lady, I will simply tell what I saw, and let others judge the impression of his guilt on my mind may have been altogether some great mistake. I-I suppose I must begin at the beginning?"

"You must begin at the beginning and go on to the ending," interposed Frederick Grey, authoritatively.

"And I'll do it," said Judith. "On the Sunday evening when that poor lady, Mrs. Crane, lay ill at the Widow Gould's, I stepped in between eight and nine to wish her good-night. I had a bad face-ache; it was in pain all over; and I wanted to get to bed. The widow and Nurse Pepperfly were at supper in the kitchen; I saw them as I passed the kitchen window,

6

and I ran up-stairs quietly, not disturbing them. I had no light, and I found the bedroom in darkness, but it was a fine moonlight night. I spoke to Mrs. Crane, but she was asleep, and did not answer, and I sat down by the bed, behind the curtain, and nursed my face for a minute or two. There came a ring at the door-bell, and I heard Mrs. Gould go to answer it, and attend the visitor up-stairs. I thought it might be Mr. Stephen Grey, but as they came into the adjoining sitting-room, I heard Mrs. Gould address him as Mr. Carlton. She went down again, and he came into the chamber, without the light. His coming in awoke Mrs. Crane, for I heard her start and stir, and he approached the bed. 'Clarice,' said he, Clarice, how could you be so imprudent, so foolish, as to come to South Wennock?' Oh, Lewis, I am so thankful you have returned!' she answered, in a joyful, loving tone, which struck me with amazement. 'Don't be angry with me; we can keep our secret; but I could not bear the thought of being ill so far away. It is such a sweet little boy!' 'It was exceedingly wrong, Clarice,' he went on, in a vexed tone; but I heard no more, for I stole out of the room. I heard Mr. Carlton say 'Who's there?' but I sped down-stairs quietly in my list shoes, for I did not like them to think they had been overheard. As I went by the kitchen Mrs. Gould spoke to me, telling me, I remember, of an accident that had happened to Mr. Carlton that evening in coming from Great Wennock. I ran in home, and went to bed; but what with the pain in my face, and the words I had overheard next door, I could get no rest. It seemed a mystery to me and nothing less, that the young lady should be so intimate with Mr. Carlton, when she had asked about him and spoken of him as a stranger. It came into my mind to wonder whether he could be her husband, but I thought I must be downright foolish to suppose such a thing. However, it was LO business of mine, and I knew I could keep my own counsel."

"Go on, Judith," said Lady Jane, for Judith had paused in thought.

"The next day I was anything but well, for I had had no sleep, and the pain in my face worried me. In the afternoon it began to swell, and in the evening, when Mr. Stephen Grey came to see Mrs. Crane, he told me the swelling would make it easier, but that I ought to tie it up. It was just seven when Mr. Stephen came in, and he expected Mr. Carlton; he waited till a quarter past, but Mr. Carlton did not come.

He observed that Mrs. Crane was flushed and looked feverish, and he spoke quite sharp to me, and said there had been too much gossiping going on; I replied that the

lady would talk, feeling well, and we could not prevent her. He said he should send in a composing draught: and he left. I returned home to tie my face up, but at first I was puzzled what to tie it with, as my boxes were not at Mrs. Jenkinson's, and a pocket-handkerchief was hardly warm enough. I laid hold of an old piece of black plush, which had covered a bonnet I had worn all the winter, and had unpicked that day. It was not worth much, and I cut it into two, and doubled the pieces together, so that they formed two ears or lappets, fastened them to some black tape, and tied them up round my chin and the sides of my face. I had got on a black cap, being in mourning for my late mistress, and when I saw myself in the glass, I thought I did look a guy. What with my swollen face, which was glazed and puffy and white, and my black eyes, blacker they seemed than usual, and this flossy plush round my face, I was a sight! Goodness me!' exclaimed Margaret when I got down-stairs, what have you been at with yourself? one would think you had got a pair of sudden-grown whiskers!' and she wasn't far wrong, as appearances went, for the little edge of the black quilled net border close to my face, and the rough plush behind it, made a very good imitation of whiskers. I was dead tired; I felt as if I could sleep; and after sitting awhile with Margaret, I said I'd go in and see if Mrs. Crane wanted anything more that I could do, and then come back and go to bed. Like the previous night, I saw that the nurse and Mrs. Gould were at supper in the kitchen -or rather, sitting at the supper-table, for supper seemed to be over. I went quietly upstairs; and, knowing those two were downstairs, I was surprised to hear a movement in the sitting-room. The first thought that struck me was, could Mrs. Crane have been so imprudent as to get out of bed after anything she might want, and I peeped in through the door, which was ajar. It was not Mrs. Crane; she was safe in bed, and the door between the two rooms was shut it was Mr. Carlton. The light | was on the mantelpiece, and he stood sideways at the cheffonier. He had a very, very small bottle in his hand, putting a cork into it, and then he put it into his waistcoat pocket. Next he took up a larger bottle, the size of those which had contained night-draughts for Mrs. Crane; it had been standing close to his hand on the cheffonier, and the cork by it; he hastily put the cork into it, and put it on the little shelf of the cheffonier, in a leaning position in the corner. He turned so quickly to leave the room, that I had not time to get out of the way; I did not know what he had been doing; I did not know it was anything wrong;