and hares.  He was told that it seized the hare or the rabbit by the hind quarters and moved up, finding the heart and lungs with its talons.  So he waited eagerly for a hare to steal out of the cover; but none appeared, much to the bird’s disappointment—­a female, and a very fine specimen, singularly tame and intelligent.  The hawk seemed to understand quite well what was happening, and watched for an opportunity of distinguishing herself, looking round eagerly; and so eager was she that sometimes she fell from the falconer’s wrist, who took no notice, but let her hang until she fluttered up again; and when Owen reproved his cruelty, he answered: 

“She is a very intelligent bird and will not hang by her legs longer than she wants to.”

It was in the afternoon that her chance came, and a rare one it was.  Two bustards rose out of a clump of cacti growing about a deserted hermitage.  The meeting of the birds must have been a chance one, for they went in different directions, and flying swiftly, soon would have put the desert between themselves, and the falconers, and each other, if the bird going eastward had not been frightened by the Arabs coming up from the lake, and, losing its head, it turned back, and flying heavily over the hawking party, gave the goshawk her single chance, a chance which was nearly being missed, the hawk not making up her mind at once to go in pursuit; she had been used for hunting ground game; and for some little while it was not certain that the bustard would not get away; this would have been a pity, for, as Owen learned afterwards, the bird is of great rarity, almost unknown.

“She will get him, she will get him!” the falconer cried, seeing his hawk now flying with determination, and a moment after the bustard was struck down.

As far as sport was concerned the flight was not very interesting, but the bustard is so rarely seen and so wary a bird that even the Arabs, who are not sportsmen, will talk with interest about it, and Owen rode up curious to see this almost fabulous bird, known in the country as the habara, a bird which some ornithologists deny to be the real bustard.  Bustard or no bustard, the bird was very beautiful, six or seven pounds in weight, the size of a small turkey, and covered with the most beautiful feathers, pale yellow speckled with brown, a long neck and a short, strong beak, long black legs with three toes, the fourth, the spur, missing.  That a hawk should knock over a bustard had not happened often, and he regretted that he knew not how to save the bird’s skin, for though stuffed birds are an abomination, one need not always be artistic.  And there were plenty at Riversdale.  His grandfather had filled many cases, and this rare bird merited the honour of stuffing.  All the same, it would have to be eaten, and with the trophy hanging on his saddle bow Owen rode back to the encampment, little thinking he was riding to see the flight which he had been longing to see all his life.