mer and more dim. When the
prey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathing
carcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by
claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled
and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and
turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a
self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then
folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to
gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of
consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about,
round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almost
snorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. At
last the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it is
stiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horrid
instinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, and
preserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last course
of his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, and
with difficulty able either to croak or to fly.

The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundred
years, perhaps a couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, girls
into maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into old
decrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at the
head of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages,
deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is--at least so men say--that he is
aware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wings
against door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity,
or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. As
the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft
in the air--or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse
like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the
house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse
hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little
grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is
sometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is that
he is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic of
human death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact,