The journey that followed was a fearful one in Blackie’s life, for he met half-way the very last foe in the world he was expecting—­namely, an owl.  Truly, it was a very small owl, scarce bigger than himself; but it was an owl, and, like all its tribe, armed to the teeth.  Men called it a little owl.  That was its name—­little owl.  Blackie didn’t care what men called it; he knew it only as one of the hundred or so shapes that death assumed for his benefit.

Just at that time it happened to be cloudy, and little owls often hunt by day.  But how was Blackie to know that, little owls being a comparatively new introduction into those parts?

Blackie screamed and fled.  The owl did not scream, but fled, too—­after Blackie.  Blackie had no means of judging how close that foe was behind by the whir of its wings.  Owls’ wings don’t talk, as a rule; they have a patent silencer, so to speak, in the fluffy-edged feathers.  Therefore Blackie was forced to do his best in breaking the speed record, and trust to luck.

It was a breathless and an awful few seconds, and it seemed to him like a few hours.  The owl came up behind, going like a cloud-shadow, and about as fast, and Blackie, glancing over his shoulder, I suppose, yelled afresh.  The terror was so very close.

Then Blackie remembered another excavation, just like the one his nest was in, a little off his course to the left, and he tacked towards it, twisting his course wonderfully, thanks to the long tail.  And the owl lost a foot on the turn.  I think it was expecting Blackie to make for the hedge at all costs.  But, be that as it may, that foot was never made up again, for Blackie vanished into the trench next instant, like a blown-out light, and, though the hunter searched for him carefully, he never put in an appearance again while that owl was within sight of the place.

[Illustration:  “The owl lost a foot on the turn”]

All signs of uproar on the passing of the little owl had died down some time before Blackie turned up again, and then it was in the garden, so he must have got from the tunnel unseen.

He still hung gamely to the food for his young, and now made another attempt to deliver that food where it belonged.  He was half-way there, indeed, before he saw the boys—­three boys—­with two rows of birds’ eggs threaded on strings.  They were passing so close to the trench that one nearly fell into it, and, of course, any one could see that they were bird-nesting.

Blackie swerved off sharply to the far hedge, his heart nearly bursting with anxiety, little knowing that the boys had never even thought of looking in the trench for nests.  It seemed the last place in the world to find one.  It may have been, moreover, that he feared that his wife was home, in which case she might have lost her head, and, dashing out with a scream, “blown the whole gaff,” as they say in the vernacular.