o a
burnished close, they all sat upon the soft turf, and Killigrew and
Ishmael watched with half-closed eyes the play of the sea-birds below
them. The wheatears flirted their black and white persons over the
rocks, the gulls dipped and wheeled, planed past them on level wings,
uttering their harsh cries, or for a flashing moment rested so close
that the blot of blood-red above their curved yellow beaks showed
vividly; out to sea a gannet hung a sheer two hundred feet in air, then
dropped, beak downwards.... He hit the sea like a stone with his
plumage-padded breast, a column of water shot up from his meteoric fall,
and he reappeared almost before it subsided with his prey already down
his shaken throat. Killigrew clapped his hands in approbation and Vassie
feigned interest.

"What a life!" exclaimed Killigrew; "if we do have to live again in the
form of animals, I hope I shall be a bird, a sea-bird for choice. Just
imagine being a gull or a gannet.... I wish one could paint the pattern
they make in the air as they fly--a vast invisible web of curves, all of
them pure beauty."

"Don't wish to be a bird in this part of the world, then," advised the
Parson drily.

"Why not? Don't they have a good time?"

"If you had watched as long as I have ... seen all the mutilated birds
with trailing legs and broken wings that pick up a miserable living as
long as the warm weather lasts.... There's not a boy in the countryside,
save a few in whom I've managed to instil the fear of the Lord, that
doesn't think he's a perfect right to throw stones at them, and, worse,
to catch them on devilish little hooks and as likely as not throw them
aside to die when caught. Grown men do it--it's quite a trade. I know
one who, if he catches on his hooks a bird he does not want, wrenches
its beak open and, tearing the hook out, flings the bird away to die.
This just mutilates the bird sufficiently to prevent it getting caught
and giving him all the trouble over again. And the Almighty does not
strike this man with his lightning from heaven.... I sometimes marvel at
the patience of God, and in my short-sighted ignorance even deplore
it...."

"Don't tell me," said Killigrew swiftly. "I don't want to know. I'd
rather think they were all safe and happy. It isn't as though one could
do anything."

"One can do very little. Lack of imagination, which is doubtless the sin
against the Holy Ghost, is at the root of it, and to that the tongues of
men