Soon after that he sighted the sea, wide-stretched and restless, ahead, and turned westward parallel with the coast-line, till, in the afternoon, he came unto “a land where it was always afternoon”—­a flat, damp, dwarf-treed, relaxing, gray land, mild, as a rule, and melancholy—­a land full of water.  But for once it was a cold land, and the thrush realized that the bitter frost had leapt ahead of him, and that he might now never outstrip it again, perhaps.  I do not know if he realized, too, that the lead sky, that looked as if it were going to come down and crush one, meant snow.

In a bare orchard he was attracted by the sight of several blue titmice and two robins, feeding upon one or two odd apples that had been left unpicked at the very top of a tree.  It seemed strange and out of place to behold apples in midwinter like that; but, for some reason, he took only a few pecks, and his devil prompted him down to peck at some soaked bread among the violets, and to drink at a spring so exquisitely encrusted with moss that it looked as if everything, every floating dead leaf, stone, and root, had been upholstered in plush.

Then Fate struck—­hard.

A snap, a thump, and he was bouncing over and over, with an air-rifle bullet in his thigh.  It was a blow that knocked him half-silly, and he was down before he knew, but only for a second, because of what he saw.  He beheld a boy, with an air-rifle in hand, running towards him; but ahead of the boy was the boy’s young cat, who evidently had learnt to look for a meal when the air-rifle went off.

The cat, being young, however, managed to bungle his pounce for the fraction of a second, and that is long enough for most of the wild-folk.  Came a mad fluttering, a beating of wings, a quick mix-up, and, before he knew, that cat found himself frantically chasing that thrush across the orchard, striking wildly always at a thrush that just wasn’t there, as the latter part flew, part hopped, with every ounce of strength and agility that clean, hard living had given him, till he was clear of the trees.  Then—­up and away, with his heart in his beak, so to speak, and his brain whirling, till the orchard lay “hull down” on the horizon, and was only another bitter experience, and a warning, seared into the bird’s memory.

So far, so good.  He had made his escape, had euchred Fate, but—­the payment for laziness, the terrible cess for a momentary lapse from vigilance, which great Nature, in her grim, wise cruelty, always demands, had to be met, and the end of it was not yet.

It began, however, now.

The thrush discovered that he was not alone in the air, and that he had all at once got himself, as it were, fixed in the public eye, and was “wanted.”  A swish in the sky made him look up, to see a rook, with a leering eye, coming down upon him.  He cleverly “side-slipped” in mid-air, and let the rook, braking wildly, go diving by.  Perhaps he wondered what had turned the rook hawk.  As a matter of fact, the weather had, partly, and the rifle had, the rest; for the rook could see what the thrush did not yet realize.