ooking after
them.

"Yes," Monsieur Dessin replied, but so shortly that the colonel
looked at him with surprise.

He was looking after his daughter and Rupert with a grave,
thoughtful face, and had evidently answered his own thought rather
than the old cavalier's remark.

"Yes," he repeated, rousing himself with an effort, "they are a
pretty pair indeed."

At a walking pace, Rupert Holliday, very proud of his charge, led
the pony in the direction of the pool in which the heron had an
hour before been seen by Hugh, the boy and girl chattering in
French as they went. When they neared the spot they stopped, and
Adele alighted. Then Rupert took the hawks, while Hugh went forward
alone to the edge of the pool. Just as he reached it a heron soared
up with a hoarse cry.

Rupert slipped the hoods off the hawks, and threw them into the
air. They circled for an instant, and then, as they saw their
quarry rising, darting off with the velocity of arrows. The heron
instantly perceived his danger, and soared straight upwards. The
hawks pursued him, sailing round in circles higher and higher. So
they mounted until they were mere specks in the sky.

At last the hawks got above the heron, and instantly prepared to
pounce upon him. Seeing his danger, the heron turned on his back,
and, with feet and beak pointed upwards to protect himself, fell
almost like a stone towards the earth; but more quickly still the
hawks darted down upon him. One the heron with a quick movement
literally impaled upon his sharp bill; but the other planted his
talons in his breast, and, rending and tearing at his neck, the
three birds fell together, with a crash, to the earth.

The flight had been so directly upwards that they fell but a short
distance from the pool, and the lads and Adele were quickly upon
the spot. The heron was killed by the fall; and to Rupert's grief;
one of his hawks was also dead, pierced through and through by the
heron's beak. The other bird was with difficulty removed from the
quarry, and the hood replaced.

Rupert, after giving the heron's plumes to Adele for her hat, led
her back to the pony, Hugh following with the hawk on his wrist,
and carrying the two dead birds.

"I am so sorry your hawk is killed," Adele said.

"Yes," Rupert answered, "it is a pity. It was a fine, bold bird,
and gave us lots of trouble to train; but he was always rash, and I
told him over and over again what would happen if he was not more
carefu