opposite to the wood named Boshhuyen after the half-ruined castle that stood in it, he caught sight of a heron winging its homeward way to the heronry, and cast off his peregrine out of the hood.  She saw the quarry at once and dashed towards it, whereon the heron, becoming aware of the approach of its enemy, began to make play, rising high into the air in narrow circles.  Swiftly the falcon climbed after it in wider rings till at length she hovered high above and stooped, but in vain.  With a quick turn of the wings the heron avoided her, and before the falcon could find her pitch again, was far on its path towards the wood.

Once more the peregrine climbed and stooped with a like result.  A third time she soared upwards in great circles, and a third time rushed downwards, now striking the quarry full and binding to it.  Adrian, who was following their flight as fast as he could run, leaping some of the dykes in his path and splashing through others, saw and paused to watch the end.  For a moment hawk and quarry hung in the air two hundred feet above the tallest tree beneath them, for at the instant of its taking the heron had begun to descend to the grove for refuge, a struggling black dot against the glow of sunset.  Then, still bound together, they rushed downward headlong, for their spread and fluttering wings did not serve to stay their fall, and vanished among the tree-tops.

“Now my good hawk will be killed in the boughs—­oh! what a fool was I to fly so near the wood,” thought Adrian to himself as again he started forward.

Pushing on at his best pace, soon he was wandering about among the trees as near to that spot where he had seen the birds fall as he could guess it, calling to the falcon and searching for her with his eyes.  But here, in the dense grove, the fading light grew faint, so that at length he was obliged to abandon the quest in despair, and turned to find his way to the Leyden road.  When within twenty paces of it, suddenly he came upon hawk and heron.  The heron was stone dead, and the brave falcon so injured that it seemed hopeless to try to save her, for as he feared, they had crashed through the boughs of a tree in their fall.  Adrian looked at her in dismay, for he loved this bird, which was the best of its kind in the city, having trained her himself from a nestling.  Indeed there had always been a curious sympathy between himself and this fierce creature of which he made a companion as another man might of a dog.  Even now he noted with a sort of pride that broken-winged and shattered though she was, her talons remained fixed in the back of the quarry, and her beak through the neck.

He stroked the falcon’s head, whereon the bird, recognising him, loosed her grip of the heron and tried to flutter to her accustomed perch upon his wrist, only to fall to the ground, where she lay watching him with her bright eyes.  Then, because there was no help for it, although he choked with grief at the deed, Adrian struck her on the head with his staff until she died.