84. WHISPERS FROM FAIRYLAND. pen

 

cruel and destructive fire upon our unhappy race.
Alas for the ruin and devastation which they spread
around! In vain did youthful rooks send forth their
wailing caw for pity and succour. In vain did the
agitated and miserable parents wheel high above the
heads of the gunners with plaintive and indignant
cries, protesting against the unjustifiable slaughter of
their young. They spoke to hearts harder than stone,
and to beings inaccessible to the cries alike of suffering
innocence and parental affection. By tens, aye, by
twenties, the youth, the flower of rookdom fell around,
and sadly were our numbers thinned by the continued
onslaught of our merciless foes. Wise by experience,
my sister and I at the first sound of the gun sought
shelter in our nest, and remained there until the last
of our enemies had departed.

It was on the afternoon of that same day that I,
deafened with the cannonading which had been going
on around us, and with a heart full of misery at the
undeserved misfortune that had fallen upon our race,
flew out from the rookery, and perched myself in the
thickest part of a large chestnut tree which stood at a
short distance from my home. From this post of
observation I saw two men approach, and soon dis-
covered that their purpose was to collect the bodies
of the slain. One of these men, whom the other ad-
dressed as ‘Jem,’ evidently filled the honourable posi-
tion of a gamekeeper. He had a black velveteen
coat on, and a gun in his hand, which he deposited at
the foot of my tree while performing the melancholy
business on which he had come, and his evident as-
sumption of superiority over his companion, together