er containing a report of my supposed drowning may
reach you when you return to England, and, as I do not want you to think
that I have gone out of this life, I am writing to tell you that the
report of my death is untrue, or, to speak more exactly, it will not be
true, if my arms and legs can make it a false report. These lines will
set you wondering if I have taken leave of my senses. Read on, and my
sanity will become manifest. Some day next month I intend to swim across
the lake, and you will, I think, appreciate this adventure. You praised
my decision not to leave my parish because of the pain it would give the
poor people. You said that you liked me better for it, and it is just
because my resolve has not wavered that I have decided to swim across
the lake. Only in this way can I quit my parish without leaving a
scandalous name behind me. Moreover, the means whereby I was enlightened
are so strange that I find it difficult to believe that Providence is
not on my side.

'Have not men always believed in bird augury from the beginning of time?
and have not prognostications a knack of coming true? I feel sure that
you would think as I do if what had happened to me happened to you. Yet
when you read this letter you will say, "No sooner has he disentangled
himself from one superstition than he drops into another!" However this
may be, I cannot get it out of my head that the strangely ill-fated bird
that came out of the wood last February was sent for a purpose. But I
have not told you about that bird. In my last letter my mind was
occupied by other things, and there was no reason why I should have
mentioned it, for it seemed at the time merely a curious accident--no
more curious than the hundred and one accidents that happen every day. I
believe these things are called coincidences. But to the story. The day
I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the
close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the
shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, wounding the bird.

'We watched it till we saw it fall on the shore of Castle Island, and,
thinking that it would linger there for days, dying by inches, I started
off with the intention of saving it from a lingering death, but a shot
had done that. One pellet would have been enough, for the bird was but a
heap of skin and feathers, not to be wondered at, its legs being tied
together with a piece of stout string, twisted and tied