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as had been the roar of winter tempests. They suggested some great mystery of Nature, but were not in themselves mysterious. Different from them all was the one weird voice that greeted him at dusk, and left with him a thought of immortality.

He would say to the shrivelled figure in the ruddy light of the ingle-nook, when he tramped into the kitchen after the long day's labour: "Mother, I heard the voice to-night."

And the old woman would reply, in the slow, quavering accents of extreme age: "The shepherd is calling to his dog, calling, calling, by the marsh and by the brook. But nothing four-footed ever comes back from the quake. Poor dog! Poor dog!"

The bittern's evening call was considered to be a solemn warning. The peasant observed the utmost care to prevent his dog from straying beyond sight on the outer fringes of the marsh, and himself, to avoid, after sundown, the neighbourhood of the dreaded spot. So the frare visitors to the marsh suffered nothing from the dwellers at the hillside farm.

By the end of April, a large nest, carelessly built of reeds and rushes, and containing four pale-brown eggs, occupied a dry tussock of ling and cotton-grass in the heart of the marsh. For some time, every approach to the nest had been vigilantly guarded by the bitterns; a wild duck, crossing a little pool beyond a near clump of reeds, had been compelled to dive repeatedly to escape the bitterns' fierce attack, and then, having failed to elude her pursuers in the shallow water, had taken flight in the direction of some more peaceful part of the The curlew, whose home was on the further shore of the pool, dared not wander afoot through the archway of the flags by the edge of the water. For long, each day, he took up his post as sentinel at some distance from his sitting mate, and piped disconsolately, as if longing to return to his old look-out station-the very tussock on which the bitterns' nest was constructed-but having, instead, to make excuses for a forced neglect of duty. Except to scare intruders, the

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bitterns, however, seldom moved, during the day, from the immediate vicinity of their nest. While the hen brooded and slept, the cock, his head well hidden in the soft plumage of his breast, stood near a clump of reeds on the margin of the pool, and dozed the quiet hours away, or, alert for signs of danger, watched the flight of passing birds. No approaching shadow seemed to escape his notice: the pool before him was a faithful mirror of everything that happened in the sky. Alike in sunshine and in shadow both he and his mate were almost invisible, so perfectly did the colours of their plumage harmonise with those of surrounding objects.

Summer came, the brief radiant summer of the open upland moor, when the days are torrid and the nights are cooled by a gentle breeze, and the few bird-voices of spring are hushed. Its approach was not indicated by the sudden unfolding of the leaf-buds on the trees; the only trees on the moor were the pines near the farm, and they were always green. Nor was it shown by any luxuriant growth of the grass; the grass, except immediately around the marsh, was stunted and parched by the fierce heats of noon. But along the hills the colour of the heather had slowly deepened on the lengthening sprays, and the bracken had thrust up its branching fronds till every trackway of the grouse and the hare resembled a bowered lane through which the creatures could wander unseen. And on the marsh the reeds and flags were tall and thick, and waved to the breath of the wind. Regularly now, in the twilight, the bitterns, leading a little family of three grey-brown birds, stole out from the mere to the brook, and thence to the gorge below the waterfall. Frogs and slugs were plentiful in the undergrowth when it was wet with dew, and, occasionally, a trout, in the act of leaving the pool to feed down-stream, could be surprised among the pebbles where the water narrowed near the side-channel of a neglected sheep-pond long since overgrown with weeds. The gorge was a chosen school, in which, safe from all enemies, the young bitterns could be taught to exercise their wings and

seek for food, in preparation for a later life of separation from the parent birds.

The heat of summer waned with the advent of August. The purple of the heather rivalled in beauty the deep orange that had taken the place of a lighter yellow in the earlier blossoms of the gorse; and at sunrise, when the bitterns flew home to their sanctuary in the marsh, the pale blue of the rolling mist, and the first golden rays of the sun, blending with the colours of the flowers, transformed the wilderness into a paradise whose splendours surpassed even those of the afterglow of the previous winter, when the male bird was about to depart to the southern coast.

Then, with tragic suddenness, the sanctuary of the mere was violated, and its peace disturbed. Early one morning, before the moon had set, and while the bitterns as usual were feeding in the gorge, an old, unmated fox, that for years had haunted the lonely countryside, trotted leisurely down the sheep-path past the farmstead, and across the rough hillside, to drink at the brook. He discovered, as he stooped by the water's edge, that the scent of a young hare was fresh on the sodden grass, but, as he followed the line for some distance by the only safe track-way through the marsh, it became faint and was lost among the reeds. The fox's home was in a cairn not far from the highest point of the moor; but, since the air was warm and gave promise of a perfect day, he turned aside from his path, lay down on the dry tussock where the bitterns had nested, and fell asleep. At dawn he was awakened by a faint rustle among the reeds. Peeping from his "seat" he saw the bitterns slowly approaching him along the track-way by which he himself had come in pursuit of the hare. His eyes ablaze, he crouched for an instant; then, bounding from the tussock, he struck down one of the young birds and fastened his teeth in its breast. The other young birds quickly vanished, but, as the fox stood over his fluttering victim, the parent bitterns, abandoning every thought of danger, closed in and struck him repeatedly with their beaks

and wings, inflicting such strong and rapid blows as for some moments to bewilder their enemy. He retreated a few paces; then, recovering from his confusion, and mad with rage, he leaped high into the air--once, twice, thrice. The conflict was over, and before him lay, fluttering feebly in the throes of death, the two rare and beautiful birds which, probably alone of all their kind, had nested that year in Britain.

Away on the fringe of the marsh, the fugitive young bitterns lurked in hiding through the day. At evenfall, they began a weary search for their missing parents; and often, through the night, their weird calls resounded in the wilderness. But the only answer that came was an occasional echo from among the slopes of the gloomy gorge.

And among the boulders of the cairn on the hilltop, the old fox, vainly endeavouring to pass the time away in sleep, moaned and writhed with pain. One of his eyes had been torn from its socket in his brief battle with the birds.

ALFRED W. RERS.

CHARLES JAMES FOX

(DIED SEPTEMBER 13, 1806)

HARLES JAMES FOX, one of the most brilliant

CHA

personalities, if not, indeed, the most brilliant personality, that flourished in the last decades of the eighteenth century, was the third son of Henry Fox, afterwards Baron Holland of Foxley, and Lady Georgiana Lennox, daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond, a grandson of Charles II. The future statesman was born on January 24, 1749, and as he grew up it was thought that a resemblance to his royal ancestor could be traced in his dark, harsh, and saturnine features, that "derived a sort of majesty from the addition of two black and shaggy eyebrows, which sometimes concealed, but more frequently developed, the workings of his mind." He was a bright, lively and original child, but subject to violent excesses of temper. "Charles is dreadfully passionate,” said his mother. What shall we do with him?" "Oh, never mind. He is a very sensible little fellow, and he will learn to cure himself," replied his father, who perceived and was proud of the lad's unusual ability. "Let nothing be done to break his spirit; the world will effect that business soon enough.”

At a private school at Wandsworth, and subsequently at Eton, where Dr. Philip Francis was his private tutor, the lad showed himself both intelligent and diligent. His education was interrupted in 1763, when his father took him to Paris and Spa, and at that early age initiated him into the mysteries of

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