s through which the trees and
chimneys pierced in slender lines of black. It was wonderful to watch
the shadows everywhere spinning their blue veil of distance that lent
even to the commonest objects something of enchantment and mystery.

Those were wonderful journeys they made together into the pathways of
the silent night, along the unknown courses, into that hushed centre
where they could almost hear the beatings of her great heart--like
winged thoughts searching the huge vault, till the boy ached with the
sensations of speed and distance, and the old yellow moon seemed to
stagger across the sky.

Sometimes they rose very high into freezing air, so high that the earth
became a dull shadow specked with light. They saw the trains running in
all directions with thin threads of smoke shining in the glare of the
open fire-boxes. But they seemed very tiny trains indeed, and stirred in
him no recollections of the semi-annual visits to London town when he
went to the dentist, and lunched with the dreaded grandmother or the
stiff and fashionable aunts.

And when they came down again from these perilous heights, the scents of
the earth rose to meet them, the perfume of woods and fields, and the
smells of the open country.

There was, too, the delight, the curious delight of windy nights, when
the wind smote and buffeted them, knocking them suddenly sideways,
whistling through their feathers as if it wanted to tear them from their
sockets; rushing furiously up underneath their wings with repeated
blows; turning them round, and backwards and forwards, washing them from
head to foot in a tempestuous sea of rapid and unexpected motion.

It was, of course, far easier to fly with a wind than without one. The
difficulty with a violent wind was to get down--not to keep up. The
gusts drove up against the under-surfaces of their wings and kept them
afloat, so that by merely spreading them like sails they could sweep and
circle without a single stroke. Jimbo soon learned to manoeuvre so that
he could turn the strength of a great wind to his own purposes, and
revel in its boisterous waves and currents like a strong swimmer in a
rough sea.

And to listen to the wind as it swept backwards and forwards over the
surface of the earth below was another pleasure; for everything it
touched gave out a definite note. He soon got to know the long sad cry
from the willows, and the little whispering in the tops of the poplar
trees; the crisp, s