d. It was Joey. It was the grey-brown peacock with a
blue neck. He was snow-wet and spent.

"Joey--Joey de-urr!" I said, staggering unevenly towards him. He looked
so pathetic, rowing and struggling in the snow, too spent to rise,
his blue neck stretching out and lying sometimes on the snow, his eyes
closing and opening quickly, his crest all battered.

"Joey dee-urr! Dee-urr!" I said caressingly to him. And at last he lay
still, blinking, in the surged and furrowed snow, whilst I came near and
touched him, stroked him, gathered him under my arm. He stretched his
long, wetted neck away from me as I held him, none the less he was quiet
in my arm, too tired, perhaps, to struggle. Still he held his poor,
crested head away from me, and seemed sometimes to droop, to wilt, as if
he might suddenly die.

He was not so heavy as I expected, yet it was a struggle to get up to
the house with him again. We set him down, not too near the fire, and
gently wiped him with cloths. He submitted, only now and then stretched
his soft neck away from us, avoiding us helplessly. Then we set warm
food by him. I put it to his beak, tried to make him eat. But he ignored
it. He seemed to be ignorant of what we were doing, recoiled inside
himself inexplicably. So we put him in a basket with cloths, and left
him crouching oblivious. His food we put near him. The blinds were
drawn, the house was warm, it was night. Sometimes he stirred, but
mostly he huddled still, leaning his queer crested head on one side. He
touched no food, and took no heed of sounds or movements. We talked of
brandy or stimulants. But I realised we had best leave him alone.

In the night, however, we heard him thumping about. I got up anxiously
with a candle. He had eaten some food, and scattered more, making
a mess. And he was perched on the back of a heavy arm-chair. So I
concluded he was recovered, or recovering.

The next day was clear, and the snow had frozen, so I decided to carry
him back to Tible. He consented, after various flappings, to sit in a
big fish-bag with his battered head peeping out with wild uneasiness.
And so I set off with him, slithering down into the valley, making
good progress down in the pale shadows beside the rushing waters,
then climbing painfully up the arrested white valley-side, plumed with
clusters of young pine-trees, into the paler white radiance of the snowy
upper regions, where the wind cut fine. Joey seemed to watch all the
time with