The fit or dream over, she would get up and
return to the house, where she would quietly set to work with the
other women in preparing the great meal of the day--the late supper of
roast and boiled meat, when all the men would be back from their work
with the cattle.
That was my last sight of Cipriana; what her end was I never heard,
nor what was done with the Paja Brava after the death of Don Evaristo,
who was gathered to his fathers a year or so after my visit. I only
know that the old place where as a child I first knew him, where his
cattle and horses grazed and the stream where they were watered was
alive with herons and spoonbills, black-necked swans, glossy ibises in
clouds, and great blue ibises with resounding voices, is now possessed
by aliens, who destroy all wild bird life and grow corn on the land
for the markets of Europe.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DOVECOTE
A favourite climbing tree--The desire to fly--Soaring birds--A
peregrine falcon--The dovecote and pigeon-pies--The falcon's
depredations--A splendid aerial feat--A secret enemy of the dovecote--
A short-eared owl in a loft--My father and birds--A strange flower--
The owls' nesting-place--Great owl visitations.
By the side of the moat at the far end of the enclosed ground there
grew a big red willow, the tree already mentioned in a former chapter
as the second largest in the plantation.
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