He learned to come to the window every morning at breakfast-time for a piece of bread-and-butter, and if the window was closed he would rap impatiently upon it with his beak.  He roosted in the orchard just across the road on the trunk of an ancient leaning apple-tree.  One night Bell heard a terrible fluttering, and looking out saw a fox making off with the peacock; he shouted and the fox dropped the peacock and bolted.  Gabriel was not hurt, but sadly ruffled inwardly and outwardly, though, next day, he was quite happy and apparently unconscious of his narrow escape.  But alas! some months later Reynard paid another visit, and poor Gabriel was never seen again.  Some years after we bought another pair, not nearly so tame as the first, and sometimes flying on to the cottage roofs and scraping holes in the thatch in which to bask in the sun.  The villagers complained that the birds sat under their black currant bushes, and devoured the currants as fast as they ripened!  We could not keep them within bounds, and later sold them to St. John’s College, Oxford, where we saw them soon afterwards in good plumage, and exactly in keeping with their beautiful surroundings.

One of my neighbours appeared to find these birds a special infliction, and complained of the invasion of his premises by “them paycocks.”  The word “pea” is always rendered “pay” in Worcestershire, and, like “tay” for “tea,” is probably the old correct pronunciation.  I lately saw a notice on some tumble-down premises near Southampton, “Pay and bane stiks for sale.”  Another notice, not too happily composed, is to be seen at a Forest village; after the owner’s name, “Carpenter, builder and undertaker—­repairs neatly executed.”

The neighbour referred to was exercised in his mind as to my position in various unwelcome parochial offices, but I was completely mystified when he told me that he had read in history of a King Alfred, but had never heard of a King Arthur.  I did not grasp the force of his remark, possibly because King Arthur was a familiar character to me, until I was nearly at my own door, when it dawned upon me to my intense enjoyment.  If the reader fails, like me, to see the point, let him turn to the title-page of this book, and read the name of the writer.

The only real objection to peacocks, under ordinary conditions, is the discordance of their cries, especially in thundery weather, when they scream in answer to every thunder-clap.  Cock pheasants, relatives of the peacock, crow loudly at any unusual noise; and I have known them expostulate at the report of a gun; they took flight, after running to a safe distance, and their crow appeared to be in the nature of a challenge or defiance, just as a barn-door cock will exult if you give him the idea that he has driven you away.

When the vessel which carried the coffin of Queen Victoria was crossing the Solent, in 1901, some very heavy salutes were fired from the battleships, and, the day being still and the air clear, the detonations carried to an immense distance.  They were distinctly heard at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, only fourteen miles from Aldington and a distance of nearly one hundred miles from the guns, in a direct line.  The reports were so loud at Woodstock, near Oxford, that the pheasants began crowing in the Blenheim preserves.