ht as a poker, was running to the window in the next room,
was up on the sill, was rubbing against and caressing the haggard face
like a mad thing.

There was a long, tense pause, broken only by a continuous purring.
Then the creaking sound as of the lid of a wicker basket being opened.
The purring ceased. The creaking came again, as if the lid were being
shut. There came the crunch once more of stealthy shod feet on gravel,
the click of the gate, and--silence!

Hawkley had come for, and found, his cat.

VI

THE CRIPPLE

It was gradually getting colder and colder as he flew, till at last, in
a wonderful, luminous, clear, moonlit sunset, when day passed,
lingering almost imperceptibly, into night, the wind fixed in the
north, and a hard white frost shone on the glistening roofs--far, far
below.

Up there, at the three-thousand or four-thousand feet level, where he
was flying, the air was as clear and sparkling as champagne, and as
still as the tomb. If he had been passing over the moon instead of
over the earth, the effect would have been something like it, perhaps.

He was only a thrush, _Turdus philomelus_ the songster, but big and
dull and dark for his kind, and he had come from--well, behind him, all
shimmering and restless in the moonlight, like a fountain-basin full of
quicksilver, lay the North Sea; ahead and beneath lay England; and
across that sea, three hundred miles, as I count it, at the very least,
to the lands of melting snow, he was going when late cold weather had
caught him and warned him to come back. And alone? No, sirs, not
quite. Ahead, just visible, blurredly--a little phantom form rose and
fell on the magic air; behind, another; on his right, a third--all
thrushes, flying steadily westward in silence; and there may have been
a few more that could not be seen, or there may not.

His crop, as were the crops of the others, was perfectly empty.
Indeed, he appeared to prefer traveling in ballast that way. But his
eyes shone, and his wing-strokes, with little pauses of rigidity
between, such as many birds take--only one doesn't notice it much--were
strong and sure.

Once a large-winged, smudged shape, making no sound as it slipped
across the heavens, came flapping almost up to him, peering this way
and that at him and his companions, with amber flaming eyes set in a
cat-like, oval face. The thrush's heart gave a great jump, and seemed
threatening to choke him, for that shape--an