Jarro didn’t succeed in freeing himself.  The encounter had this good in it at any rate:  the farm-hand noticed that the bird was alive.  He carried him very gently into the cottage, and showed him to the mistress of the house—­a young woman with a kindly face.  At once she took Jarro from the farm-hand, stroked him on the back and wiped away the blood which trickled down through the neck-feathers.  She looked him over very carefully; and when she saw how pretty he was, with his dark-green, shining head, his white neck-band, his brownish-red back, and his blue wing-mirror, she must have thought that it was a pity for him to die.  She promptly put a basket in order, and tucked the bird into it.

All the while Jarro fluttered and struggled to get loose; but when he understood that the people didn’t intend to kill him, he settled down in the basket with a sense of pleasure.  Now it was evident how exhausted he was from pain and loss of blood.  The mistress carried the basket across the floor to place it in the corner by the fireplace; but before she put it down Jarro was already fast asleep.

In a little while Jarro was awakened by someone who nudged him gently.  When he opened his eyes he experienced such an awful shock that he almost lost his senses.  Now he was lost; for there stood the one who was more dangerous than either human beings or birds of prey.  It was no less a thing than Caesar himself—­the long-haired dog—­who nosed around him inquisitively.

How pitifully scared had he not been last summer, when he was still a little yellow-down duckling, every time it had sounded over the reed-stems:  “Caesar is coming!  Caesar is coming!” When he had seen the brown and white spotted dog with the teeth-filled jowls come wading through the reeds, he had believed that he beheld death itself.  He had always hoped that he would never have to live through that moment when he should meet Caesar face to face.

But, to his sorrow, he must have fallen down in the very yard where Caesar lived, for there he stood right over him.  “Who are you?” he growled.  “How did you get into the house?  Don’t you belong down among the reed banks?”

It was with great difficulty that he gained the courage to answer.  “Don’t be angry with me, Caesar, because I came into the house!” said he.  “It isn’t my fault.  I have been wounded by a gunshot.  It was the people themselves who laid me in this basket.”

“Oho! so it’s the folks themselves that have placed you here,” said Caesar.  “Then it is surely their intention to cure you; although, for my part, I think it would be wiser for them to eat you up, since you are in their power.  But, at any rate, you are tabooed in the house.  You needn’t look so scared.  Now, we’re not down on Takern.”

With that Caesar laid himself to sleep in front of the blazing log-fire.  As soon as Jarro understood that this terrible danger was past, extreme lassitude came over him, and he fell asleep anew.