s, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless
days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it!
No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I
took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales.
It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great mountains,
and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I forget the
blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the
lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste of my first
fat insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy
holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as
long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had had my warning;
never again did I think of disobedience.'

'Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!' twittered the other two
dreamily. 'Its songs its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember----'
and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while
he listened fascinated, and his heart burned within him. In himself,
too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant
and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound birds, their
pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new
sensation and thrill him through and through with it; what would one
moment of the real thing work in him--one passionate touch of the real
southern sun, one waft of the authentic odor? With closed eyes he dared
to dream a moment in full abandonment, and when he looked again the
river seemed steely and chill, the green fields grey and lightless. Then
his loyal heart seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its treachery.

'Why do you ever come back, then, at all?' he demanded of the swallows
jealously. 'What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little
country?'

'And do you think,' said the first swallow, 'that the other call is
not for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet
orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of haymaking,
and all the farm-buildings clustering round the House of the perfect
Eaves?'

'Do you suppose,' asked the second one, that you are the only living
thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the cuckoo's note
again?'

'In due time,' said the third, 'we shall be home-sick once more for
quiet water-lilies swaying on the surface of an English stream. But
to-d