eating itself: the mountain would not go to
Mahomet, so Mahomet had to go to the mountain.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

A STRANGE AWAKENING.

There is not much room in a bird's head for brains; but it has plenty of
thinking power all the same, and one of the first things a bird thinks
out is when he is safe or when he is in danger. As a consequence of
this, we have at the present day quite a colony of that shyest of wild
birds, the one which will puzzle the owner of a gun to get within
range--the wood-pigeon, calmly settled down in Saint James's Park, and
feeding upon the grass, not many yards away from the thousands of busy
or loitering Londoners going to and fro across the enclosure, which the
birds have found out is sacred to bird-dom, a place where no gun is ever
fired save on festival days, and though the guns then are big and
manipulated by artillerymen, the charges fired are only blank.

But Saint James's Park from its earliest enclosure was always a place
for birds--even the name survives on one side of the walk devoted by
Charles the Second to his birdcages, where choice specimens were kept;
so that a hundred and eighty years ago, when the country was much closer
to the old Palace than it is now, there was nothing surprising in the
_chink_, _chink_ of the blackbird and the loud musical song of thrush
and lark awakening a sleeper there somewhere about sunrise. And to a
boy who loved the country sights and sounds, and whose happiest days had
been spent in sunny Hampshire, it was very pleasant to lie there in a
half-roused, half-dreamy state listening to the bird notes floating in
upon the cool air through an open window, even if the lark's note did
come from a cage whose occupant fluttered its wings and pretended to fly
as it gazed upward from where it rested upon a freshly cut turf.

The sweet notes set Frank Gowan thinking of the broad marshy fields down
by the river, bordered with sedge, reed, and butter-bur, where the clear
waters raced along, and the trout could be seen waiting for the
breakfast swept down by the stream--where the marsh marigolds studded
the banks with their golden chalices, the purple loosestrife grew in
brilliant beds of colour, and the creamy meadow-sweet perfumed the
morning air. Far more delightful to him than any palace, more musical
than the choicest military band, it all sent a restful sense of joy
through his frame, the more invigorating that the window was wide, and
the odour of t