w the quarry at once
and dashed towards it, whereon the heron, becoming aware of the approach
of its enemy, began to make play, rising high into the air in narrow
circles. Swiftly the falcon climbed after it in wider rings till at
length she hovered high above and stooped, but in vain. With a quick
turn of the wings the heron avoided her, and before the falcon could
find her pitch again, was far on its path towards the wood.

Once more the peregrine climbed and stooped with a like result. A
third time she soared upwards in great circles, and a third time rushed
downwards, now striking the quarry full and binding to it. Adrian, who
was following their flight as fast as he could run, leaping some of the
dykes in his path and splashing through others, saw and paused to watch
the end. For a moment hawk and quarry hung in the air two hundred feet
above the tallest tree beneath them, for at the instant of its taking
the heron had begun to descend to the grove for refuge, a struggling
black dot against the glow of sunset. Then, still bound together, they
rushed downward headlong, for their spread and fluttering wings did not
serve to stay their fall, and vanished among the tree-tops.

"Now my good hawk will be killed in the boughs--oh! what a fool was I
to fly so near the wood," thought Adrian to himself as again he started
forward.

Pushing on at his best pace, soon he was wandering about among the trees
as near to that spot where he had seen the birds fall as he could guess
it, calling to the falcon and searching for her with his eyes. But here,
in the dense grove, the fading light grew faint, so that at length he
was obliged to abandon the quest in despair, and turned to find his way
to the Leyden road. When within twenty paces of it, suddenly he came
upon hawk and heron. The heron was stone dead, and the brave falcon so
injured that it seemed hopeless to try to save her, for as he feared,
they had crashed through the boughs of a tree in their fall. Adrian
looked at her in dismay, for he loved this bird, which was the best of
its kind in the city, having trained her himself from a nestling. Indeed
there had always been a curious sympathy between himself and this fierce
creature of which he made a companion as another man might of a dog.
Even now he noted with a sort of pride that broken-winged and shattered
though she was, her talons remained fixed in the back of the quarry, and
her beak through the neck.

He stroked th