ng, but everybody heard it arrive. It was
of snow-white, and it was of jet-black, and it knocked the cock-raven
one way, and sent the hen-raven, picking up her skirts, as it were, and
fleeing, the other. And the name of the avalanche was Cob.

I fancy he considered that he bore a grudge against that cock
bandit-raven. Perhaps in dreams he could still feel that trap on his
leg. Who knows? He certainly used to wake up with outcries, and he
equally certainly made that cock-raven shy of that island for evermore.

VIII

THE WHERE IS IT?

No one would have thought of looking for any living beast in the raffle
of dried twigs and tamarisk "leaves" between the crawling, snake-like
roots of the feathery tamarisks if it had not been for the noise. The
noise was unmistakable, as the noise of a fight always is; and the only
other living thing near the spot, a tiny, tip-tailed, brown wren--a
little ball of feathers, dainty as you please, and all alone there, and
out of place down by the terrible, snow-covered, wind-tortured estuary
shore--made shift to remove herself, making remarks--wrens can't help
saying what they feel--as she flitted.

Then the combatants fell out--literally. Up from the solid earth
between the twisted roots they seemed to come, but that proved the art
of one of them in concealing his front-door from the curious, and down
the bank of the sea-wall, over and over and over, squeaking the most
murderous language, and grappling like pocket-devils--tumbled a little
jet-black and a little dark-brown beast.

They continued the duel upon the dry gravel below--the finest and the
whitest gravel ever you did see--and they would apparently have gone on
for goodness knows how long if a gray-white, thin, worn post a couple
of yards away had not turned into a heron and stalked an ungainly stalk
towards them.

Then they fell apart, and one of them, at any rate--the brown one--ran
away in the shape of a water-vole--water-"rat," if you will--the heron
making spear-lunges at him with his bill as he ungainlily skipped at
the other's tail all the way up the bank. The other fighter, the black
one, could not rightly be said to have turned into anything very
much--at least, not anything that any one could swear to. It just
seemed as if a dark blur whizzed about--more bird-like than
beast-like--around the astonished and prancing heron, and then into
nowhere. It was like watching a blue-bottle in a tumbler, and very