"Another pigeon!" I shouted presently, filled with pride at the
discovery and fishing the bird up from the bottom. He came over to me
and began to examine the dead bird, his wrath still increasing; then I
shouted gleefully again, "Another pigeon!" and altogether I shouted
"Another pigeon!" about five times, and by that time he was in a quite
furious temper. "Rats--rats!" he exclaimed, "killing all these pigeons
and dragging them up here just to put them away in empty barrels--who
ever heard of such a thing!" No stronger language did he use. Like the
vicar's wonderfully sober-minded daughter, as described by Marjory
Fleming, "he never said a single dam," for that was the sort of man he
was, but he went back fuming to his boxes.
Meanwhile I continued my investigations, and by and by, peering into
an empty barrel received one of the greatest shocks I had ever
experienced. Down at the bottom of the barrel was a big brown-and-
yellow mottled owl, one of a kind I had never seen, standing with its
claws grasping a dead pigeon and its face turned up in alarm at mine.
What a face it was!--a round grey disc, with black lines like spokes
radiating from the centre, where the beak was, and the two wide-open
staring orange-coloured eyes, the wheel-like head surmounted by a pair
of ear-or horn-like black feathers! For a few moments we stared at one
another, then recovering myself I shouted, "Father--an owl!" For
although I had never seen its like before I knew it was an owl.
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