For hours he lay there in that drowsy condition, his mother keeping watch over him, and when it passed off, and he got up again, his temper appeared changed:  he was more gentle and affectionate with his mother, and obeyed her every wish.  And when in his rambles on the hill he found a snake lying in the sun he would steal softly near it and watch it steadily for a long time, half wishing to taste that strange purple honey again, so that he might lie again in the sun, feeling what the snake feels.  But there were more wonderful things yet for Martin to see and know in the hills, so that in a little while he ceased to have that desire.

CHAPTER XV

MARTIN’S EYES ARE OPENED

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One morning when they went up into a wild rocky place very high up on the hillside a number of big birds were seen coming over the mountain at a great height in the air, travelling in a northerly direction.  They were big hawks almost as big as eagles, with very broad rounded wings, and instead of travelling straight like other birds they moved in wide circles, so that they progressed very slowly.

They sat down on a stone to watch the birds, and whenever one flying lower than the others came pretty near them Martin gazed delightedly at it, and wished it would come still nearer so that he might see it better.  Then the woman stood up on the stone, and, gazing skywards and throwing up her arms, she uttered a long call, and the birds began to come lower and lower down, still sweeping round in wide circles, and by and by one came quite down and pitched on a stone a few yards from them.  Then another came and lighted on another stone, then another, and others followed, until they were all round him in scores, sitting on the rocks, great brown birds with black bars on their wings and tails, and buff-coloured breasts with rust-red spots and stripes.  It was a wonderful sight, those eagle-like hawks, with their blue hooked beaks and deep-set dark piercing eyes, sitting in numbers on the rocks, and others and still others dropping down from the sky to increase the gathering.

Then the woman sat down by Martin’s side, and after a while one of the hawks spread his great wings and rose up into the air to resume his flight.  After an interval of a minute or so another rose, then another, but it was an hour before they were all gone.

“O the dear birds—­they are all gone!” cried Martin.  “Mother, where are they going?”

She told him of a far-away land in the south, from which, when autumn comes, the birds migrate north to a warmer country hundreds of leagues away, and that birds of all kinds were now travelling north, and would be travelling through the sky above them for many days to come.

Martin looked up at the sky, and said he could see no birds now that the buzzards were all gone.

“I can see them,” she returned, looking up and glancing about the sky.